Li Tianchu

Li Tianchu, chief scientist of NIM, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, born in November 1945 in Guiyang City, Guizhou Province; graduated from Tsinghua University in 1970, and earned his master and doctoral degrees from NIM and Tsinghua University in 1981 and 1991 respectively. Since 1982, he has served as an assistant researcher, associate researcher and researcher at NIM. In 2002 and 2014, he was invited to act as an adjunct professor at Beijing Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University, respectively. In 2011, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. From 2013 to 2018, he served as the chairman of the China Instrument and Control Society.

Mr. Li has long been engaged in the research area of time & frequency, absolute gravity with atom interferometry, laser spectroscopy and fiber-photoelectron metrology.

Since 1997, he has been presiding over the development of a series of laser cooling-cesium atom fountain clocks. In 2014, the NIM5 fountain clock was approved as the national standard device for the measurement of second. The NIM5 fountain clock  provided the traceability for the ground time of the Beijing Satellite Navigation Center in 2015. In 2001, he planned and guided the development of the femtosecond optical frequency comb to establish the coherent connection between microwave and optical frequency; since 2005, he has planned and led the development of strontium atomic optical lattice clocks. In 2013, he led the development of the rubidium atomic interference absolute gravimeter which successfully participated in the 2017 international absolute gravity comparison.

Mr. Li published more than 60 papers on peer review.

He won the third, second and first prizes of National Science and Technology Progress Award  in 1995, 2002 and 2006, respectively; won the first prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award  in 2016, and won the “Ho Leung Ho Lee Science and Technology Progress Award" in 2015.