Physics  X  Network

The physics of networks, or the network of physics?

This rhetorical question captures the interdisciplinary essence of our research group's mission — to explore the rich interplay between network science and both statistical and quantum physics.

Led by Professor Xiangyi "X" Meng, the group's research spans several areas:

  • Quantum networks, communications, and computing; quantum complex systems.
  • Physical/biological networks (and their connections to string theory).
  • Statistical physics of complex networks, network metrics.
  • Open quantum systems, open quantum field theories.

Prof. Xiangyi "X" Meng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He earned his B.S. in microelectronics from Peking University and completed his Ph.D. in physics at Boston University (advised by Prof. Eugene Stanley). Prior to his role at RPI, he worked with Prof. Albert-László Barabási as a Postdoc at Northeastern University's Center for Complex Network Research, and with Prof. István Kovács as a Research Associate at Northwestern University.

Prof. Meng's research spans several areas of physics and network science, including quantum networks and quantum information, open quantum field theories, science of science, computational social science, physical and biological networks, scale-free network theories, information diffusion, tensor networks, and recurrent neural networks. He also applies interdisciplinary network science approaches to explore brains and econophysics.

Prof. Meng has published 20+ publications in prestigious journals such as Physical Review Letters, PNAS, PNAS Nexus, Nature Human Behaviors, Nature Communications, Communications Physics, Chaos Solitons & Fractals, Physical Review D, Physical Review Research, among others. He has reviewed 40+ papers from the above journals and Europhysics Letters, New Journal of Physics, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, etc. His work has been highlighted in Physics World, Phys.org, among other media outlets.