Recently, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the United States announced the recipient of the 2026 Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize. Luo Yao, the undergraduate alumnus from the Class of 2020 at the School of Physics, Nanjing University (NJU), has been honored with this prestigious award in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to “first principle of many body theory of polarons” and “data-driven compression of quantum interactions”.

Luo Yao earned his bachelor’s degree from the School of Physics, NJU in 2020, and obtained his PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech in 2026. He was advised by Professor Marco Bernardi. His research interests include first-principles calculations and electron-phonon interactions, with a particular focus on polarons, data-driven compression, and applications of machine learning methods in materials calculations.

During his undergraduate studies, he first conducted research on classical mechanics under Professor Wang Sihui, afterwards learned first principles calculations in Professor Sun Jian’s research group, and later pursued research on quantum many-body physics in Professor Wang Qianghua’s research group. He was awarded the National Scholarship in 2018 and honored as a Jiangsu Provincial Merit Student in 2019. In addition, he won the first prize in the China Undergraduate Physics Tournament for two consecutive years in 2017 and 2018 as team captain and team leader.

It is reported that the Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize is the highest standalone award for doctoral dissertations at Caltech. The Clauser Prize is awarded annually to a PhD candidate whose research is judged to exhibit the greatest degree of originality as evidenced by its potential for opening up new avenues of human thought and endeavor as well as by the ingenuity with which it has been carried out. Normally, only one graduating PhD candidate is selected for the Clauser Prize each year, which is announced and presented at the commencement ceremony. Historically, in only a very few years were exceptions made to award the Clauser Prize to two individuals simultaneously. In 2026, only Luo Yao received this honor.

The School of Physics, Nanjing University

hereby extends its sincere congratulations to our alumnus Luo Yao!