Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Shirley Li
The Ohio State University

Citation:

"For outstanding contributions to neutrino astrophysics through a coherent body of theoretical work that pioneers new background-rejection techniques for MeV detectors and new signal-selection techniques for TeV detectors."

Background:

Shirley Li received both her B.S. (2011) and Ph.D. (2017) degrees in physics at the Ohio State University. While in graduate school, she worked with Prof. John Beacom on using theoretical considerations to guide the development of new experimental techniques to better measure astrophysical neutrinos. These techniques are being implemented in neutrino experiments. They could lead to better measurements of neutrino properties and a better understanding of the sources of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. She was a finalist in 2018 APS Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award in Astrophysics. She is now a postdoc in the particle theory group at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Her current research interests include neutrino physics, physics beyond the standard model, and QCD. She is particularly interested in understanding GeV neutrino-nucleus interaction cross sections and how they will impact the next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation program.