SHU-HENG SHAO
Assistant Professor
Physics and Astronomy
shu-heng.shao@stonybrook.edu | (631)-632-7973, Math Tower 6-103
Curriculum Vitae. (Last updated: 2024 Apr 19)

Biography
Shu-Heng Shao is an assistant professor at the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP) at Stony Brook University. He received a B.S. in Physics from National Taiwan University in 2010, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 2016, under the supervision of Professor Xi Yin. Before joining Stony Brook, he was a five-year postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton from 2016 to 2021.

Research Statement
Shu-Heng Shao works on structural aspects of quantum field theory, with applications in condensed matter physics, quantum gravity, and mathematical physics. In recent years, he has been interested in generalizing the symmetry principle in theoretical physics. He has developed the physical and mathematical framework for a variety of generalized symmetries and their anomalies. These new symmetries are discovered in a variety of continuum and lattice quantum systems, including the Ising model, Yang-Mills theories, fracton lattice models, and the Standard Model of Nature. They lead to new constraints on renormalization group flows, new insights into naturalness problems, and new organizing principles in classifying phases of quantum matter. All his papers can be found on INSPIRE and Google Scholar. Some of these recent developments were reviewedin his lecture notes, What's Done Cannot Be Undone: TASI Lectures on Non-Invertible Symmetries.