Yu-Ao Chen
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei
Citation: For achieving a series of breakthroughs in the field of optical quantum information processing and quantum simulation with ultra-cold atoms.
Bio: Yu-Ao Chen is a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China. In 2008, he obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and he has conducted research at the University of Heidelberg, the University of Mainz, and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics. In 2011, he returned to the University of Science and Technology of China. Yu-Ao Chen has done outstanding research on experimental quantum information processing based on the manipulation of photons and atoms. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and OPTICA (formerly the Optical Society of America). He did his best to develop quantum manipulation techniques for photons and atoms, which have been systematically applied to quantum communication, quantum computation, quantum simulation, and other fields. In the past years, together with his colleagues, Yu-Ao has performed a number of significant experiments in the field, which were featured widely in scientific news services, like Nature and Nature journals, Physics World, Physics News Update, and Scientific American. He has been recognized by many prestigious prizes, including the 2013 Fresnel Prize for fundamental aspects from the EPS, the Qiu Shi Outstanding Youth Scholar prize in China, the first prize of the National Natural Science Award (Third Completion), the 2016 Young Scientist Award for the Commission on AMO Physics from the IUPAP, the 2016 Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award in Math and Physics, the 2019 Xplorer Prize, and the 2024 New Cornerstone Investigator award from New Cornerstone Science Foundation. In 2013 he was appointed as the Chief Engineer for the Quantum Communication Beijing-Shanghai Backbone project. Since 2018, he has served as the Chief Scientist of the National wide-area Quantum Secure Communication Network project.