YIN-CHEN HE
Assistant Professor
Physics and Astronomy
yinchen.he@stonybrook.edu
Curriculum Vitae. (Last updated: 2025 Feb 6)

Biography
Yin-Chen He is an assistant professor at the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP) at Stony Brook University. He received a B.S. and a Ph.D. in Physics from Fudan University, Shanghai, China. After his Ph.D., he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard (2016–2018) and at the Max Planck Institute for Complex Systems in Dresden (2014–2016).

Before joining YITP in 2025, Yin-Chen was at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, where he spent seven years (2018–2025) as a permanent faculty member. He is now a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute.

Research Statement
Yin-Chen He works on quantum field theory, with a particular interest in 3D conformal field theories (CFTs) and their applications in condensed matter physics (e.g., quantum criticality, spin liquids). He enjoys both theoretical research and numerical simulations (i.e. DMRG and the conformal bootstrap).

Yin-Chen’s most well-known contribution is the invention of fuzzy sphere regularization, which is reshaping research on 3D CFTs. Before his work in CFTs, Yin-Chen made several key contributions to quantum spin liquids, including: 1. the original discovery of the chiral spin liquid in the kagome spin-1/2 model; 2. pioneering numerical and theoretical work on the U(1) Dirac spin liquid in kagome and triangular antiferromagnets.