UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Cui-Zu Chang, professor of physics in the Penn State Eberly College of Science, has been selected as an Experimental Physics Investigator by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This year, the foundation selected 21 new mid-career investigators who are pushing the boundaries of experimental physics. Each of the new investigators will receive $1.35 million over five years, providing flexible support to pursue ambitious research directions and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.
Chang’s research lies at the intersection of quantum materials and device physics. He studies quantum anomalous Hall materials, in which electrons flow along the material’s edges in a single direction with no resistance or scattering. Combining these materials with superconductors, without the need for large applied magnetic fields, could enable a new generation of spintronic and electronic devices with ultralow power consumption. Chang’s team will fabricate and characterize such devices using a technique called selective-area molecular-beam epitaxy, while avoiding conventional processing steps that often damage their delicate edge states. This work could help establish new approaches to topological quantum computation and energy-efficient electronics.
“From the start, our aim has been to accelerate progress at the frontier of experimental physics by giving brilliant mid-career scientists the kind of flexible, sustained support that federal grants rarely can,” said Theodore Hodapp, program director for the initiative. “That freedom lets them take on risky, high-reward experiments and follow ideas when research results lead them down new pathways.”
In addition to providing research funding, the Moore Foundation creates opportunities for investigators to learn from one another by bringing cohorts together each year in an informal setting focused on trading ideas and imagining new experiments, rather than the usual conference format. The initiative also asks investigators to lead well-mentored, high-performing research groups that develop the next generation of scientific talent and provides professional development opportunities to support investigators toward that goal.
Chang received the Faculty Scholar Medals for Outstanding Achievement from Penn State earlier this year and the Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award from the Penn State Materials Research Institute in 2021. In 2019, he was named an Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative (EPiQS) Investigator by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Chang’s additional awards and honors include the Outstanding Young Researcher Award (Macronix Prize) from the International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers in 2019, a U.S. National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in 2019, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2018, the Army Research Office (ARO) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award in 2018, the MIT Tech Review 35-Under-35 Innovation Award (China region) in 2018, the Young Scientist Prize from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) in 2017, and the Switzerland Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Award in 2013. Chang is a fellow of the American Physical Society and holds five patents in both the United States and China.
Before joining the Penn State faculty in 2017, Chang was a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a doctoral degree in condensed matter physics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, in 2013 and a bachelor’s degree in optical engineering from Shandong University in Jinan, China, in 2007.