Biography
Viacheslav Li earned his PhD in physics from the University of Hawai`i, where he worked with John Learned on the miniTimeCube experiment, developing and deploying the first boron-loaded plastic-scintillator detector with fast-timing electronics and high spatial resolution for antineutrino detection at the NIST research reactor. Following his doctoral studies, he joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher in the Rare Event Detection Group. At LLNL, he contributed to the development of the Segmented AntiNeutrino Directional Detector, a novel Li6-doped plastic-scintillator array for reactor monitoring, and contributed to the WATCHMAN project, a gadolinium-doped water Cherenkov detector for remote reactor monitoring at the Boulby mine in the UK.
Currently, Viacheslav is a staff scientist at LLNL, where his research focuses on advanced photodetector systems, monolithic and segmented antineutrino detectors, scalable water Cherenkov instrumentation, and algorithms for directional sensitivity. His work supports non-intrusive reactor monitoring and nuclear nonproliferation initiatives, with recent publications covering large-area picosecond photodetectors, lithium-loaded scintillator materials, and compact data acquisition systems for neutron and gamma-ray detection.
Viacheslav’s research interests include neutrino and neutron detector development, photodetector technologies, data acquisition and analysis methods, and applications of radiation detection for nuclear security and reactor monitoring.
Education
- PhD, Physics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018
- Grad Student, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 2008–2011
- Specialist/MS, Physics, Irkutsk State University, 2008
Publications
2025 3 publications
- V.A. Li, et al., Initial assessment of second generation of large-area picosecond photodetectors with multi-channel systems-on-a-chip readout,Rev. Sci. Instrum. 96, 113102 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0269181
S. A. Dazeley, et al., A monolithic antineutrino detector for non-intrusive reactor monitoring, Nucl. Instrum. Methods, A (2025) 170915.
- O. Benevides Rodrigues, et al., A prototype reactor-antineutrino detector based on Li-doped pulse-shaping-discriminating plastic scintillator. arXiv:2505.05696, Phys. Rev. Applied 24, 054023 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1103/6t97-9bpb.
2024 2 publications
M.J. Duvall, et al., Directional response of several geometries for reactor-neutrino detectors, Physical Review Applied 22 (2024) 054030. arXiv:2402.01636.
C. Roca, et al. Performance of large-scale 6Li-doped pulse-shape discriminating plastic scintillators, Nucl. Instrum. Methods, A 1069 (2024) 169916.
2023 1 publication
V.A. Li, et al., Evaluation of a positron-emission-tomography-based SiPM readout for compact segmented neutron imagers, Nucl. Instrum. Methods, A 1046 (2023) 167624. arXiv:2202.07759.
2022 1 publication
V.A. Li, S.A. Dazeley, M. Bergevin, A. Bernstein, Scalability of gadolinium-doped-water Cherenkov detectors for nuclear nonproliferation, Physical Review Applied 18 (2022) 034059. arXiv:2204.08618.
2019 2 publications
V.A. Li, et al., SANDD: A highly-segmented pulse-shape-sensitive plastic scintillator detector incorporating silicon photomultiplier arrays. Nucl. Instrum. Methods, A 942 (2019) 162334, arXiv:1903.11668.
- G.R. Jocher et al., miniTimeCube as a Neutron Scatter Camera, AIP Advances 9, 035301 (2019), arXiv:1903.01848.
2018 2 publications
- V.A. Li, et al., Studies of MCP-PMTs in the mTC neutrino detector, AIP Advances 8, 095003 (2018), arXiv:1809.08314.
V.A. Li, miniTimeCube: Building The World’s Smallest Neutrino Detector (PhD thesis, 2018) INSPIRE record 1666321.
2016 1 publication
- V.A. Li, et al., Invited article: miniTimeCube, Review of Scientific Instruments 87, 021301 (2016), arXiv:1602.01405.
Other 3 publications
G. Yepez, et al., Algorithm to extract direction in 2D discrete distributions and a continuous Frobenius norm, arXiv:2506.17360.
C. Lane et al., A new type of Neutrino Detector for Sterile Neutrino Search at Nuclear Reactors and Nuclear Nonproliferation Applications, arXiv:1501.06935.
- Full list: Google Scholar, ORCID, INSPIRE.
Awards
PLS NACS Division Spot Award (2025)
LLNL Tranformation Award (2024)
PLS Directorate Award (2024)
GS Silver Award (2023)
CGSR Short-Term Fellowship (2023)
University of Hawai‘i Outstanding Physics Teaching Assistant Prize (2013)