Two Penn State physics professors elected as APS Fellows
Two faculty members from the Penn State Eberly College of Science have been elected as Fellows of the American Physical Society (APS), the world’s largest organization dedicated to physics. The new cohort of fellows includes Cui-Zu Chang, professor of physics, and Doug Cowen, professor of physics and of astronomy and astrophysics.
The APS Fellowship Program recognizes members who have made advances in knowledge through original research and publication, have made significant and innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology, or who have made significant contributions to the teaching of physics or to service opportunities and activities of the society, according to the APS website. Each year the society elects no more than one-half of one percent of its then-current membership to the status of Fellow.
“I am very proud that Cui-Zu and Doug have been selected as APS Fellows,” said Mauricio Terrones, the George A. and Margaret M. Downsbrough Department Head of Physics, Evan Pugh University Professor, and professor of chemistry and of materials science and engineering. “Both bring incredible expertise to our department, and we are fortunate that they are members of Penn State community.”
Cui-Zu Chang
Chang’s research combines state-of-the-art materials synthesis techniques, such as molecular beam epitaxy, unconventional device concepts, and a range of experimental characterization methods to discover emergent quantum phenomena in thin films, heterostructures, and superlattices of various materials. Chang’s research interest centers on topological materials, quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulators, and their integration with superconductors with an aim for scale quantum information applications.
Chang received the Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award from the Penn State Materials Research Institute in 2021 and was named an Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative (EPiQS) Investigator by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2019. His additional awards and honors include the Outstanding Young Researcher Award (Macronix Prize) from the International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers in 2019, a 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 has been a member of the American Physical Society since 2012 and holds five patents in both the United States and China.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2017, Chang was a postdoctoral associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a doctoral degree in condensed matter physics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, in 2013 and a bachelor's degree in optical engineering at Shandong University in Jinan, China, in 2007.
Doug Cowen
Cowen studies neutrinos, which are tiny subatomic particles that can travel astronomical distances undisturbed and are very difficult to observe. He is interested in both their basic physical properties and the information they reveal about their cosmic sources. Cowen is a member of several international research collaborations, including IceCube, which takes advantage of a large neutrino detector buried in the Antarctic ice at the South Pole; Eos, which focuses on a high-sensitivity neutrino detector in California that is currently undergoing tests; and LiquidO/CLOUD, which is exploring a new class of particle detection technology for nuclear reactor monitoring. He is also a member of the Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON) at Penn State, which detects incoming cosmic signals in real-time and cues other observatories around the world to follow up, searching for additional types of cosmic messengers to rapidly increase information about cosmic events.
Cowen served as the associate director for the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos from 2013 to 2017. He held a Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom from 2022 to 2024 and a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2016 and was a Faculty Fellow for the Penn State Institute for Cyberscience (now the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences) in 2012 and a Fulbright Scholar at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2019. Cowen also received a CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 1999.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2002, Cowen was an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1994 to 2002 a research fellow at Caltech from 1990 to 1994. He earned doctoral and master’s degrees in physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1990 and 1985, respectively, and a bachelor’s degree in physics at Dartmouth College in 1983.