Rate My Professor Liping Gan

Professor Liping Gan is a Professor of Physics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) in the Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography. She received her B.Sc. in Nuclear Physics from Peking University in 1985, M.Sc. in Theoretical Nuclear and Particle Physics from Peking University in 1988, and Ph.D. in Experimental Nuclear and Particle Physics from the University of Manitoba in 1998. Prior to joining UNCW as an Assistant Professor in 2001, she served as an Instructor of Physics at Beijing Medical University from 1988 to 1991 and held postdoctoral positions at Hampton University from 1998 to 2000 and the University of Kentucky in 2001. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2007 and to full Professor in 2010, where she continues to contribute to the department's research mission.

Gan's research focuses on experimental nuclear and particle physics, with particular emphasis on precision measurements of the electromagnetic properties of light pseudoscalar mesons—π⁰, η, and η'—via the Primakoff effect at Jefferson Laboratory. As co-spokesperson for the PrimEx experiments, she led efforts in PrimEx-I, resulting in a high-precision measurement of the π⁰ lifetime with 2.8% total uncertainty, published in Physical Review Letters in 2011. PrimEx-II followed in 2010 to achieve 1.4% precision. She developed the 12 GeV Primakoff experimental program at JLab, including approved experiments for η radiative decay width (E10-011) and transition form factors. Her broader interests encompass hypernuclear spectroscopy (e.g., JLab Hall C E89-009), rare η and η' decays testing chiral, P, CP, and C symmetries of QCD, H-dibaryon and double-Λ hypernuclei studies, charge symmetry breaking in n-p scattering, and quark effects in nuclear weak interactions at facilities like Brookhaven and TRIUMF. Gan has authored or co-authored 96 publications and served as Principal Investigator on four NSF grants since 2002. Among her honors are the James F. Merritt Research Award from UNCW in 2011, annual recognition from UNCW for student impact since 2003, and a research award from Peking University in 1988. She has chaired the PrimEx data analysis review committee, served on a 2010 NSF nuclear physics panel, joined the GlueX collaboration board in 2012, and advised UNCW's Center for the Support of Undergraduate Research since 2003. Gan actively mentors UNCW undergraduates in JLab collaborations, fostering their involvement in international physics research.