News Source & Photographer: School of Physics

Edited by: Wang Lirong

Reviewed by: Jiang Yan

On October 19, the American Physical Society (APS) announced the list of newly elected APS Fellows for 2022. Professor Yao Yugui of BIT School of Physics, was elected as an APS Fellow for the paper with the title of "For pioneering first-principles computational studies of the anomalous Hall effect and the topological properties of novel materials, especially two-dimensional materials". The election signifies that his past academic achievements and contributions have been highly recognized by the industry.

Founded in 1899, the American Physical Society is one of the world's most prestigious professional societies in physics, with more than 50,000 members worldwide. According to the regulations of the American Physical Society, the number of newly elected fellows each year is no more than 5‰ of its total fellows (155 in 2022). The selection process is very stringent.

Professor Yao Yugui, Director of the BIT Key Lab of advanced optoelectronic quantum architecture and measurement (Ministry of Education) and Dean of School of Physics, received the Outstanding Scientific and Technological Achievement Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011; received funding from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2012; was selected for several national high-level talent support programs; received the Second Prize of Beijing Higher Education Teaching Achievement in 2017; received the second prize for Natural Sciences of the National Science and Technology Award in 2018; received the special allowance of the State Council in 2020; was selected as one of the Highly-Cited researchers of Clarivate from 2018 to 2021; received the second prize for Natural Sciences of the Beijing Science and Technology Award in 2022. In 2022, Professor Yao led the BIT Physics subjects to be selected as one of the "Double First Class" disciplines. He is currently the Deputy Secretary General of the the Computational Materials Science Branch of the Chinese Materials Research Society, a member of the Computational Condensed Matter Committee of the Chinese Physical Society, a member of the Science Popularization Committee of the Chinese Physical Society, and an editorial board member of several international SCI journals.

Professor Yao Yugui is mainly engaged in research on condensed matter physics, computational physics and materials physics, and has made a series of breakthrough results in the field of fundamental research for many years. With regard to the key scientific issues related to the Berry phase effect in materials, Professor Yao pioneered the development of first-principles calculation methods for physical quantities of anomalous transport and topological invariants, and some results on anomalous transport were written into textbooks, being one of the pioneers in this field. Professor Yao led the research on two-dimensional topological materials such as silicene, and the proposed theoretical model was titled. Professor Yao completed the classification of quasiparticles in 3D crystals and established the encyclopedia, which provides theoretical guidance for the search and realization of relevant evolved particles; he developed the rapid detection techniques for energy release properties and susceptibility traces of energy-containing materials, which fills the technical gaps in related fields. So far, professor Yao has published more than 250 SCI papers [includingNature(1),Phys. Rev. Lett.(27),Phys. Rev. B/A/E/M/R(100 plus),Naturesub-publications (14), top journals with impact factor >10 (20 plus), etc. His research results in the fields of anomalous transport, silicene, graphene, topological materials and properties, etc. have significant international impact and have been widely cited by peers, including several Nobel Prize winners, with a total of more than 18,500 citations by SCI, currently more than 2,400 citations per year, the highest single citation of more than 1,800. His 10 papers have been cited more than 500 times, with an H-index of 59. He has made many invited presentations in international conferences such as APS and MRS. He has chaired or undertaken many projects of the National Foundation of China, Key Projects of the Foundation Committee, National Key Research and Development Program, 973 Program, etc.