Yi Chen

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Yi Chen is currently an assistant professor in Vanderbilt university. She started her journey in computer science on pseudo-random number generators before joining the CMS heavy-ion group at MIT as an undergraduate student. She obtained her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology with a novel multi-dimensional technique she developed with Dr. Vega-Morales for the CP measurement of the Higgs boson in the 4l channel.

Yi Chen re-joined the heavy-ion group as a CERN research fellow. She performed early heavy-ion jet substructure measurements and finished large-area jet measurements in heavy-ion collisions. She led the CMS jet calibrations group in 2018 and 2019 and, later on, the CMS heavy ion physics analysis group until 2021, in addition to coordinating the heavy ion trigger and jet reconstruction efforts. She is interested in studying QCD under extreme conditions in the quark-gluon plasma, with an emphasis on using jets as a probe. This includes, for example, global parameter extraction with the Bayesian analysis technique, studying jets across all systems from e+e- to ion-ion collisions, and exploring innovative observables in heavy-ion collisions.

Research Interests & Current projects

• Study of jets and their substructures across different collision systems from electron-positron collisions, proton-proton collisions, proton-ion collisions, up to ion-ion collisions
• Study of the Quark Gluon Plasma using highly energetic objects as probes
• Search for Quark Gluon Plasma-like signature in smaller collision systems
• Using a Bayesian framework to perform global parameter extraction on complex systems