Giuliano Giacalone

High-energy heavy-ion collisions have long served as a powerful tool to probe the properties of hot and dense QCD matter, with an established experimental program at collider facilities worldwide that is set to continue for the next decades. Recently, a novel and vibrant research avenue has emerged from this program: the realization that smashing nuclei at high energy enables us to reveal in unprecedented detail the many-body structure of the colliding ions, providing thus a new perspective on nuclear structure and the strong nuclear force. In this talk, I will review the foundational principles and key discoveries that have shaped this emerging field, as well as exciting future prospects, including how dedicated ion runs at the Large Hadron Collider could be leveraged to provide critical input for beyond the Standard Model (BSM) searches with nuclei and for the study of collective phenomena in small systems.