HKU Physicist Professor Yi Yang Bags Two Prestigious Awards for Pioneering Photonics Research in 2024

In a remarkable testament to his pioneering research in photonics, Professor Yi YANG, Belinda Hung Outstanding Young Professor and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has been honoured with two prestigious awards in 2024 – the Xplorer Prize and the Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award.

 

Leading the announcements, Professor Yang has been recognised as the sole recipient from Hong Kong of the 2024 Xplorer Prize. The Xplorer Prize, a non-governmental, merit-based award, honours exceptional young scientists under 45 who display outstanding quality and innovation in their research fields. This prestigious accolade, funded by the New Cornerstone Science Foundation established by Tencent, confers each winner with a total of RMB 3 million over the next five years. With this prize, Professor Yang has been internationally recognised for his novel work in nanophotonics and free-electron optics.

 

Adding to his laurels, Professor Yang has also been conferred the 2024 Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award for his trailblazing research in photonics, specifically his work on 'Nonrelativistic free-electron-light interaction with nanophotonics'. This award is one of the most prestigious recognitions of the Croucher Foundation. Granted after an intense selection process, including a paper selection exercise, detailed international peer review, and extensive discussions among Governors, the Innovation Award also comes with a substantial grant of HK$5 million, underlining the significance of Professor Yang's accomplishments.

 

Professor Yang’s groundbreaking research focuses on realising strong free-electron-light interaction by interfacing slow nonrelativistic electrons with nanophotonic environments. This synergy between free electron optics and nanophotonics has led to new discoveries and applications, such as stimulated inverse Cherenkov effect, entanglement between free electrons and photons, tunable integrated radiation sources and particle accelerators, and even potential advances in biomedical imaging.

 

‘Our research can be useful in electron microscopy and spectroscopy. It could generate entangled electrons and photons for quantum light generation and manipulation. It may also enable integrated free-electron radiation sources and accelerators,’ said Professor Yang, with an aim to provide a general framework to elucidate the maximal quantum interaction limit between free electrons and photons. Based on the quantum limit, he will utilise optimal structures to demonstrate the advantages of slow-electron in radiation generation and quantum light manipulation by studying cathodoluminescence in electron microscopes.   

 

In response to the recognitions, Professor Yang stated, ‘This recognition motivates my team and me to continue advancing free-electron optics and nanophotonics, with the goal of creating new breakthroughs in free-electron-light interaction and radiation generation.’

HKU is immensely proud of Professor Yang’s achievements and looks forward to his continued contributions to nanophotonics and quantum science, further strengthening HKU’s global impact. These awards are an important recognition of Professor Yang’s past research achievements and a testament to his innovative ideas for the future.

 

Biography of Professor Yi Yang
Professor Yang’s academic journey started at Peking University, where he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He then got his PhD degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2019, and continued to work as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT before joining HKU as an Assistant Professor in 2022. 

 

As an accomplished researcher in the field of nanophotonics and optical physics, Professor Yang’s research focuses on topics such as free-electron-light interaction and synthetic gauge fields. Receiving several prestigious awards, including the 2024 Croucher Tak Wah Mak Innovation Award for Pioneering Photonics Research, Professor Yang has also been named a Physical Science Fellow in the 2023 Asian Young Scientist Fellowship, recognised as one of the Innovators under 35(China) by MIT Technology Review in 2022, and awarded the 2022 Excellent Young Scientists fund (Hong Kong and Macau) under the National Natural Science Foundation of China, an organisation managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).

 

Learn more about the Xplorer Prize: https://xplorerprize.org