Christopher Lee

Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Christopher Lee is a recipient of the 2015 Early Career Research Program awards from the Department of Energy Office of Science.

Lee was selected for his proposal on “Precision Probes of the Strong Interaction.”

“This prestigious award is recognition of Christopher Lee’s outstanding work in nuclear and particle physics which is vital part of the Laboratory’s national security science mission,” said Alan Bishop, Principal Associate Director for Science, Technology and Engineering. “Early career scientists such as Christopher represent the next generation of scientific excellence at Los Alamos National Laboratory.” 

The Early Career Research Program, now in its sixth year, is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work. Under the program, researchers based at DOE national laboratories will receive financial assistance for research expenses.

“The DOE Office of Science award will enable our group to expand and deepen its research,” Lee said. “This award is equally a recognition of the strength and leadership of the nuclear theory group and the Laboratory as a whole, to whom I am grateful for their collegial support.”

A DOE news release has more information about the Early Career Award recipients.

About Lee

Christopher Lee earned his doctoral degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2005. He has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington’s Institute for Nuclear Theory, the University of California at Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Theoretical Physics.

Lee joined the Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology (NPAC) Group at the Laboratory in 2012 as a staff scientist and has pursued research on effective field theories of the strong interaction probed in high-energy particle collisions as well as on the origin of matter in the early universe. He has been a member of Los Alamos’ Laboratory Directed Research and Development Exploratory Research NPAC Category Proposal Review Committee since 2013, and has been the chairman of that committee since 2015.

His awards include the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Lee was also selected as a finalist for the American Physical Society’s Leroy Apker Award in 2000. Within the local community, he is an active member of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos where he is a middle- and high-school catechist.