Mei Bai, 2014
Nuclear Physics: For innovation and leadership to achieve the successful acceleration and storage of polarized proton beams up to 255 GeV at the Relatvistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and for its related impact to advancing fundamental nuclear physics.
Mai Bei is honored for her outstanding contributions advancing understanding of the dynamics of spin-polarized beams and for the acceleration of polarized protons at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), making it the world's first and only high energy polarized proton collider. The successful acceleration of polarized proton beams up to 255 GeV, and the collision of polarized protons up to a center-of-mass energy of 510 GeV in RHIC, has impacted fundamental nuclear physics, since it allowed for the first direct measurement of the gluton and sea quark contribution to the spin of the proton.
