‘To do something nobody’s done’: quantum physicist Zhu Zijie leaves Europe for China

Academic rising star Zhu Zijie has returned to China to join Fudan University as a Xianghui Young Scholar and associate professor at the Xianghui Academy.

Photo: Handout Science and Nature are among the world’s most prestigious journals, which most scientists strive to publish in but never will.

By the age of 30, quantum physicist Zhu Zijie had already published in both with significant discoveries on the behaviour of cold atoms.

After graduating from Peking University, he went to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) – Albert Einstein’s alma mater – for graduate studies and stayed there as a postdoctoral researcher for over a year.

In March, Zhu returned to China from Switzerland to join Fudan University as a Xianghui Young Scholar and associate professor at the Xianghui Academy.

The name “Xianghui” honours two founding figures of Fudan University, Ma Xiangbo and Li Denghui.

The programme aims to attract outstanding overseas scientists, particularly early-career researchers, to join Fudan.

Zhu’s interest in physics began with a popular science book.

One afternoon in junior school, he found a small book on the family bookshelf that discussed Newtonian mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity – sparking his curiosity about the physical world.

In high school, his physics teacher recognised his talent and guided him to take part in physics competitions.

He won first prize in a provincial competition and in 2014 entered Peking University’s School of Physics – widely regarded as the country’s top physics programme.

At the end of his second semester, Peking University’s Institute of Quantum Electronics recruited undergraduates for research projects, specifically in cold atom physics – a field he had just begun to explore.

Cold atom physics is a frontier field in which atoms are cooled to near absolute zero (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) to observe quantum effects.

His master’s and doctoral research focused on quantum simulation and quantum computing experiments using ultracold atomic systems, leveraging controllable atoms to simulate complex quantum systems and push beyond the limits of classical computing.

In 2024, he published a paper titled “Reversal of Quantised Hall Drifts at Noninteracting and Interacting Topological Boundaries” as first author in Science.

In simple terms, the study examines how particles move along a special “quantum track” – a quantised Hall drift – where they

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