On July 10, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) officially announced that Pan Jianwei, Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), has been awarded the 3rd Mendeleev International Prize in Basic Sciences in recognition of his "pioneering contributions to large-scale secure quantum communication and scalable quantum computing". The award ceremony will take place at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on July 17.

Established by UNESCO in 2019 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the formulation of the Periodic Table of Elements by Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, the Mendeleev International Prize in Basic Sciences is dedicated to advancing scientific progress, science popularization and international cooperation. The prize is conferred annually upon two scientists who have made breakthrough discoveries in basic sciences or delivered substantial socio-economic impacts. Professor Pan is the first Chinese scholar to receive this prestigious honor. The other laureate for this year's edition is Sergei Sheiko, George A. Bush Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.

UNESCO stated that Professor Pan is an internationally leading scientist in the fields of quantum optics, quantum communication and quantum computing. His team developed the Micius Satellite for Quantum Science Experiments, which has enabled quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum teleportation across distances of thousands of kilometers. The team has also successfully demonstrated quantum computational advantage. These achievements mark the transition of global quantum networks from theoretical concept to practical reality, laying a solid foundation for the development of a secure, high-efficiency quantum information infrastructure.

Professor Pan's receipt of the prize underscores China's world-leading position in the frontier domains of quantum communication and quantum computing, and constitutes a strong endorsement of China's capabilities in basic scientific research.

Separately, on July 11, the IEEE Photonics Society announced that Lu Chaoyang and Pan Jianwei have been named recipients of the 2026 IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award for their "pioneering work in single-photon sources and optical quantum computing".

This award honors exceptional contributions to the fundamentals, applications, or both, of quantum electronics. In the area of single-photon sources, Professors Lu and Pan have systematically advanced quantum dot single-photon source technology, realizing single-photon sources that simultaneously deliver high purity, high indistinguishability and high efficiency — a critical breakthrough underpinning scalable optical quantum information processing. In optical quantum computing, the pair developed Jiuzhang, a 76-photon optical quantum computing prototype, which achieved the first milestone of quantum computational advantage in a photonic quantum system. Their most recent system, Jiuzhang 4.0, can manipulate more than 3,000 photons, and performs Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) tasks 10⁵⁴ times faster than El Capitan, the world's fastest supercomputer currently in operation, establishing the world's most powerful quantum computational advantage to date. These findings have not only made pioneering contributions to the advancement of large-scale optical quantum computing, but have also solidified China's status among the top tier of nations in quantum computing worldwide.

The award conferred on Professors Lu and Pan marks the first time that research originating from China has been recognized by this prize. Previous laureates include distinguished scholars: Shuji Nakamura, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics; Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou, co-winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics; and Ferenc Krausz, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics. Prominent researchers in the field of quantum information, including Hoi-Kwong Lo, Atac Imamoglu and Yoshihisa Yamamoto, are also past recipients of the award.

Source: Official WeChat Account of the University of Science and Technology of China