Zitao WANG

(2012 Paul and May Chu UG Research Award)

Back in his junior high school days in Guangzhou, Zitao already joined a study group on mathematics and became interested in geometry in particular. When he entered HKUST, he was interested in statistical mechanics and joined Prof. K. Y. Szeto's research group. In his award-winning work, he discovered how the stability of interacting processes on a network is related to its eigenvalue spectrum. His results will be useful in understanding many network properties in real life, such as how an epidemic spread in ecological systems, and how voltage instabilities propagate in power grids. In his third year, he joined Prof. Henry Tye's research group, and planned to pursue graduate studies in particle theory and cosmology.