The Journey ...
I grew up in Chengdu, China, and attended ShiShi High School 石室中学.
In 1984, I was fortunately admitted to Special Class for the Gifted Youth, at
the University of
Science and Technology of China. It was a memorable 4 years, as
eloquently put by this introduction .
In 1988, I came to UCSD through
CUSPEA program to
continue graduate study on accelerator physics, particularly microwave and its
interaction with electrons. I have worked on PEP-II B
Factory since obtained a Ph.D. in 1995. The $ 250 million
project is a bid to understand why we live in a matter-dominated
universe, or more technically, what causes CP violation. In 1997, I
moved 100 feet to join
ARDB to study advanced
accelerator techniques, where I came up with the Photonic
Bandgap Fiber Accelerator idea.
In the beginning of the tech recession of 2000, I joined
Intel hoping to save the economy :-) and
became a wireless
communication architect. My major interests are electromagnetics, wireless
communications like Bluetooth(802.15), UWB (802.15.3), WiFi (802.11) and WiMax(802.16). We are especially interested in MIMO OFDM,
beam forming, channel state feedback etc. We have developed a compact and
scalable codebook for MIMO OFDM channel state feedback. The
codebooks and associated algorithms are now part of the
IEEE 802.16e standard. We also study and develop algorithms for the radio coexistence on the laptop
platform. Some of the interesting problems we are working on are related
to line/plane packing in Grassmannian manifold, sphere
packing in Stiefel manifold, Voronoi diagram in high
dimension lattices and lattice basis reduction.
What else I do (in order of frequency)
- Reading. A few recent books: "The character of physical law", "Guns,
Germs and Steel", "Da Vinci Code", "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark",
"Voodoo Science".
- Tennis, travel,
swimming, skiing.
- Photography: Here is a photo
of green flash
right before sunset.
- Stargazing. I am fascinated by the starry sky ever
since I saw a solar eclipse in 1980. Together with photography, it is a
perfect way to sink money :-) From this Photo
of Comet Hale-Bopp taken at Fremont Peak State
Park on 3/29/1997, the blue ion tail is clearly visible.
Leonid
2001 is a spectacular show of the cosmic fire work. One
has to be present to appreciated the scale. The photos,due
to the limited field of view, don't match the visual sensation.
But enjoy anyway.
Leonid
2002 proves to be impressive too even under a full moon.
Mars 2003 offers an opportunity to take this photo. The white cap is the
polar ice, CO2 ice to be exact. But underneath it is water ice. So it is not too far a stretch to
claim that I saw water on Mars :-). Seriously, the whereabout of the Martian
water is still a mystery. Most people believe it is a few meters
underneath.
Weigh heavy object: On a
clear winter night, I went out and took a series of photos of Jupiter
through Meade 8" LXD-55 SC. The swift motion of her
satellites caught my attention. Recalling high school physics and a bit
graduate estimation theory (not necessary, but more accurate),
I was able to find her clumsy mass: 1.40 +/- 0.24 X 10^27 kg. The exact answer
is 1.899 X 10^27. OK, my scale is a bit off, but she was hundreds of
millions of miles away! - Programming. A financial
calculator that is able to calculate any 1 of the 5
quantities.
-
Global Positioning System -- Another government sponsored project
turned into commercial success. No, I did not build it, but
contributed to the business with the acquisition of a GARMIN 12XL. This was my in-car navigation
system
in
2000. It was replaced by a
GPSMap 76C in 2004. - Bridge,
chess
Misc
- A true story about a cancer
patient in China surviving pseudomyxoma peritonei, a rare form of treatable
cancer.
Last changes:
in
2000. It was replaced by a
GPSMap 76C in 2004.