Prof. Jue WANG, Assistant Professor within the Department of Physics at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), has been awarded the 2026 Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award for his groundbreaking analysis in experimental condensed matter physics. His work focuses on utilizing ultrashort pulses of sunshine to create and management quantum states in ultrathin supplies and gadgets, providing transformative potential for the way forward for electronics, optoelectronics, and data applied sciences.
Prof. Wang will obtain HKD 5 million in funding from the Croucher Foundation to assist his trailblazing analysis. The “Croucher Innovation Award” is likely one of the Foundation’s high honors, recognizing Hong Kong’s brightest younger scientific minds who’ve demonstrated the potential to make vital breakthroughs of their respective fields.
Controlling the Quantum World with Light
Prof. Wang’s analysis facilities on atomically skinny gadgets, that are manufactured from supplies composed of just a few layers of atoms. While most analysis on this discipline focuses on supplies in steady and static circumstances, he explores the “hidden” quantum states that will emerge when these techniques are pushed out of equilibrium utilizing extraordinarily quick pulses of sunshine.
By combining ultrafast optical spectroscopy with quantum machine engineering and low-temperature methods, Prof. Wang seeks to find light-induced emergent phenomena equivalent to superconductivity, magnetism, and different collective quantum results. This work might open new potentialities for the following era of electronics, new strategies of knowledge processing, and gadgets able to working in excessive environments.
Award Fuels “Angel Investment” in Science
He acknowledged, “I am deeply honored to receive the Croucher Innovation Award. The news of the award was almost too good to believe, and it carries a special meaning for me. It feels like an ‘angel investment’ that provides the freedom to build new experimental platforms and explore ambitious directions.”
Pioneering the Quantum Frontier
Prof. Wang is an experimental physicist specializing in low-dimensional supplies and strongly correlated phenomena. With a Ph.D. from Columbia University and a postdoctoral fellowship on the Harvard Quantum Initiative, his analysis makes use of ultrafast lasers, nanofabrication, and dilution refrigeration that reaches millikelvin temperatures to check novel quantum matter. By exploring supplies pushed out of equilibrium, his crew goals to bridge basic questions in condensed matter physics with the highly effective toolbox of optical physics, offering the groundwork for the continued quantum revolution and future expertise.