C.N. Yang Award for 2020

Background

The C.N. Yang Award has been established to honor young researchers with prominent research achievements and to promote the development of leaders in physics in the Asia Pacific region. The Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS) and the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics (APCTP) have jointly established the AAPPS-APCTP Chen-Ning Yang Award (C.N. Yang Award).

Eligibility

1. The awardee must have obtained a PhD in physics or an equivalent degree no more than 10 years
    prior to the date of nomination.
2. The awardee must have done the work to be awarded when s/he had an affiliation to an institution
    in a member country/region.
3. The awardee must have an affiliation to an institution in a member country/region at the time of    
    nomination.

Channel of Nominations

1. Self-nomination is not possible.

2. Through a member society:

    I. Societies with divisional structure (Australia, CPS, KPS, JSAP, JPS, Indonesia, and Vietnam): 
       Each division chair can make one nomination every year in the relevant specialty.

   II. Societies without divisional structure: 
       The president of each society can make up to three nominations every year.

3. Individual nomination:

Each participant of the most recent Asia Pacific Physics Conference (APPC14) organized by AAPPS, who has paid the full registration fee, has a right to make one nomination.

Nomination Package

The nomination package must be prepared in a single PDF file and must be submitted by e-mail to the secretary of AAPPS and the administrative office of APCTP at award@apctp.org simultaneously, prior to the announced deadline, together with a cover letter indicating the most relevant session name of the most recent or forthcoming APPC.  The package must include all of the materials that are listed below.

1. A letter of not more than 5000 characters explaining the nominee’s achievements 
    with a citation having less than 300 characters.

2. The nominee’s contact information.

3. The nominee’s biographical information, 
    including the date when the nominee’s PhD was received and the institution where the PhD was
    awarded.

4. The nominee’s publication list, 
   including the URL information where the complete texts of five of the nominee’s foremost publications
   can be retrieved.

Sessions of the most recent APPC (APPC14 in 2019)

A.     Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Gravitation

B.     Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics

C.    Condensed Matter, Semiconductor & Materials Physics

D.    Particle Physics

E.     Strongly Correlated Electron Systems

F.     Optics & Laser

G.    Synchrotron Radiation

H.    Statistical Physics & Bioinformatics

I.     Complex Systems, Mathematical Physics & Computational Physics

J.     Biological and Medical Physics

K.     Physics Education

L.     Magnetism & High Magnetic Field

M.    Nuclear Physics

N.    Plasma Physics

O.    Quantum Information

Selection Process

A selection committee, appointed by the AAPPS Division, the AAPPS and the APCTP, shall determine the recipient of the prize from the nominations, taking into account the overall quality and significance of the contribution and the creativity exhibited in the contribution.

Prize

The prize consists of a US$1000 monetary prize and a certificate for each recipient. The prizes will be presented to the awardees by the AAPPS President at the C.N. Yang Award Ceremony at the AAPPS HQ, and the recipients are invited to give talks and publish review papers to the AAPPS Bulletin.

The AAPPS Chen Ning Yang Award

  The idea to create the AAPPS (Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies) Prize or Award was first discussed at the Third Council meeting held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in August 1992. It was noticed that it is important to encourage young physicists in the Asia/Pacific region and to introduce excellent activities in the region around.

  In the second term of the AAPPS Council (1994 – 1997) creation of the AAPPS Award of Physics was approved as follows:
  a. The AAPPS Award is given at the occasion of the Asia Pacific Physics Conference (APPC) to   
      outstanding young physicists in the country/region where the APPC is held.
  b. The candidates of awardees are selected by the member society of the AAPPS organizing         
      the  APPC (the host society).
  c. The criteria for selection are decided by the host society.
  d. The awardees are approved by the Ordinary General Meeting following to the recommendation by  
      the host society.
  e. The President of the AAPPS awards the AAPPS Award at the APPC.

  The Seventh APPC was decided to be held in Beijing, China in August 1997. Then the Chinese Physical Society (the Executive Committee of the 7APPC chaired by Professor Zhao Zhong Xian) selected two candidates of awardees. Both candidates were approved by the Third Ordinary General Meeting of the AAPPS held on 18 August 1997.

  The first AAPPS Award was given to two graduate students in China from the AAPPS President at the Closing Ceremony of the 7APPC.

  The awardees and their subjects were Mr. Wu Jian (Department of Physics, Tsinghua University) by his contribution on ¡°the electron transport through mesoscopic systems¡± and Mr. Yang Haitao (Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) by his contribution on the development of 4.2K high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope and its applications to high temperature superconductors.

  Professor Chen Ning Yang was the Chairperson of the Ad Hoc Group for the Formation of the AAPPS from 1988 to August 1990 and the First President of the AAPPS from 11 August 1990 to 2 July 1994.

  He worked as a Council member of the AAPPS in the Second term and retired from the Council at the end of 1997. The Council acknowledged his long-standing contribution for the AAPPS and conferred him the title of Honorary President. At the same time the AAPPS Award of Physics was renamed as the AAPPS Chen Ning Yang Award.

  The past awardees for the AAPPS C.N.Yang Award 

Awardees of C.N.Yang Award at APPC14
	Igor AHARONOVICH (University of Technology Sydney) "For his pioneering studies of quantum emitters in two-dimensional materials and wide bandgap semiconductors." Aharonovich's group explores new quantum emitters in widebandgap materials and aims to fabricate quantum nanophotonicdevices on single chips for the next generation's quantum computing, quantum cryptography, and quantum bio-sensing needs. In 2016, Aharonovich led his team to discover the first quantum emitter in 2D materials operating at room temperature. He co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including one of the most cited reviews on diamond photonics. More recently, he has led his team to realize a new generation of plasmonic devices.
	Xiong-Jun LIU (Peking University) "For his outstanding contributions to ultracold atomic research, in realizing an original quantum simulation for synthetic gauge field and topological quantum phases." Liu is one of the pioneers in quantum simulation for synthetic gauge field andtopological quantum phases. He proposed the first model of the (quantum) spin Hall effect for ultracold atoms and has successfully realized one-dimensional spin-orbit coupling (Abelian synthetic gauge field) and two-dimensional spin-orbit coupling (non-Abelian synthetic gauge field) for ultracold atoms, in addition to establishing a systematic theory for realizing, engineering, and detecting topological phases. These works have advanced quantum simulation for synthetic gauge field and topological quantum phases to a highly active and broadly recognized research topic in ultracold atoms. Importantly, for condensed matter physics, he proposed the concept of symmetry protected non-Abelian statistics of Majorana zero modes in topological superconductors, which has added a new family member of non-Abelian statistics to quantum statistics and has fundamentally overturned the traditional view of non-Abelian statistics. His works have creatively changed the theory and has had a crucial impacton the related experimental investigations.
	Song HE (Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) "For his critical role in advancing the understanding of the scattering amplitudes in gauge theories, gravity, and string theory." Song He has played a key role in recent advances in better understanding the scattering amplitudes in gauge theories, gravity, and string theory. He is renowned for discovering new ways of computing scattering amplitudes and unraveling their elegant mathematical structures and hidden relations. Since Witten's celebrated proposal of twistorstring theory in 2003, there has been enormous progress in computing and understanding the scattering amplitudes of quantum field theory (QFT), which is conceivably the foundation of particlephysics. In this fast-growing frontier of theoretical high energy physics, Song He's works not only enable more precise predictions of the Standard Model for high-energy experiments, such as the LHC, but also shed new light on the structures of QFT and the fundamental issues in quantum gravity and string theory.