The sudden death of a promising young Princeton University Chinese researcher and innovator in the field of AI-powered electronics has shocked academic and online communities in the United States and China.
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Twenty-eight-year-old Li Haoran was found dead in his home in West Windsor, New Jersey, on Thursday, according to the university. Li’s death was confirmed in a statement by the university’s administration on Friday, but further details were not immediately available.
Li was an exceptional talent in the field of power electronics and machine learning and had recently completed his PhD in electrical and computer engineering, following his distinguished undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University.
Despite his short career, Li had already won international acclaim, including a prize-winning paper that outlined the application of big data and machine learning to model improved magnetic materials – a pioneering interdisciplinary innovation.
Li received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University in 2019 and began at Princeton later that year. He earned his master’s degree in 2021 through the Princeton Power Electronics Research Lab.
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According to his professional profile on social media, Li had recently defended his PhD dissertation in electrical and computer engineering and was a new member at the Andlinger Centre for Energy and the Environment.
In 2023, Li was awarded the First Place Prize Paper Award by IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (TPEL). IEEE TPEL publishes only about 1,000 of the thousands of submissions it receives annually.
