Cui-Zu Chang receives Faculty Scholar Medal for scholarly, creative excellence
Cui-Zu Chang, professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science, is one of six Penn State faculty members to receive 2026 Faculty Scholar Medals for Outstanding Achievement. Established in 1980, the award recognizes scholarly or creative excellence represented by a single contribution or a series of contributions around a coherent theme. A committee of peers reviews nominations and selects candidates.
Chang is a condensed matter experimentalist. His research centers on topological and superconducting materials, particularly the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect and interface superconductivity. His work explores dissipation-free transport in QAH insulators and their integration with superconductors, with implications for low-energy electronics and quantum computing.
“Chang played an important role in the progress and development of quantum materials and technology. In particular, his research aims to advance scalable quantum information science, enabling the development of dissipationless quantum devices,” a nominator said. “The QAH effect, where electrons are confined to the edges of material and flow without resistance, holds promise for applications in Majorana physics and the next generation of spintronic and electronic devices with ultralow power consumption.”
His research has led to the discovery of new quantum phenomena, including the axion insulator in magnetic topological insulator sandwich structures, multiple dissipation-free channels in QAH insulators and interface superconductivity between two magnetic materials. In April, Chang published two back-to-back papers in Nature about his research demonstrating that superconductivity can be switched on in a once-magnetic material and revealing a new “quantum dance” between superconductivity and a moiré superlattice.
Chang has received multiple honors for his work, including election as an American Physical Society Fellow, the Gordon and Betty Moore EPiQS Materials Synthesis Investigator Award, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Army Research Office Young Investigator Program Award, the Macronix Prize, the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.
Nominators said Chang’s research has resulted in a slew of findings that pave the way for new paradigms in topological quantum computation and energy-efficient electronic systems.
“He is widely recognized as a major player in this field,” a nominator said. “His more recent works have been breaking new ground, developing platforms for eliciting topological quantum responses in artificially-grown and patterned quantum materials in an attempt to take them from the discovery stage to possible applications.”
Since 2020, Chang’s group has published more than 60 high-profile papers on topological and superconducting materials with novel quantum properties, including one in Review Modern of Physics, four in Nature, two in Science, six in Nature Materials, five in Physical Review Letters, 11 in Nature Communications and 10 in Nano Letters. Recent highlights include two the Nature papers published last week; his 2023 review article “Colloquium: Quantum anomalous Hall effect”; and his 2020 Nature paper, “Tuning the Chern number in quantum anomalous Hall insulators”.
“Chang is deserving of this honor because his pioneering experimental discoveries in topological quantum materials have fundamentally reshaped condensed matter physics. His work on the quantum anomalous Hall effect and topological superconductivity has opened entirely new fields with profound implications for quantum computing, spintronics, and energy-efficient technologies,” a nominator said. “The scale of his impact is global, influencing both fundamental science and emerging quantum technologies, and his leadership has driven major advances recognized by the scientific community worldwide.”