Welcome to a New Associate Professor at IFA: You Zhou

You Zhou brings 19 years of experience in high-energy nuclear physics research and has been closely involved in CERN experiments throughout his career. His research focuses on collisions between heavy ions, that is, large atomic nuclei, at ultra-relativistic energies in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). His work combines detector-based measurements with advanced data analysis, and he has contributed to new insights into the so-called quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter that dominated the universe during the first microseconds after the Big Bang. Most recently, his contributions to understanding the structure of light nuclei through measurements conducted at the LHC have established a clear link to IFA’s existing activities in nuclear physics.

You Zhou obtained his PhD from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has been affiliated with the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen since 2015, where he began as a postdoctoral researcher and, in 2019, was appointed to a fixed-term position as Associate Professor. His research has received support from, among others, the DFF Sapere Aude programme, the Villum Young Investigator programme, and an ERC Starting Grant.

With the appointment of You Zhou, IFA strengthens its research activities in CERN-related physics, and we look forward to his many contributions to the institute, including research, teaching, and collaboration.

We warmly welcome him to the institute.

Ulrik Uggerhøj, Head of Department