Chemistry
Associate Professor
Professor Li's lab focuses on spectroscopy and microscopy at the Atomic Level Laboratory. The lab combines femtosecond laser and scanning tunneling microscope to study the quantum phenomena that occur at nearly the smallest length scale and the fastest time scale.
Bio
Dr. Shaowei Li received his B.S. from Nankai University in 2010 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 2017. He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University and later as a Heising-Simons Junior Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego in 2021 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2026. He also holds the Yinan Wang Memorial Chancellor Endowed Junior Chair at UC San Diego. Shaowei’s group focuses on probing the fundamental properties of low-dimensional systems, including single molecules and layered materials, using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. His group further integrates scanning tunneling microscopy with optical spectroscopy to investigate light–matter interactions at the atomic scale.