Academician Du Jiangfeng, a leader in quantum precision measurement, takes up his new position as President of Zhejiang University

On December 28, Zhejiang University announced that Du Jiangfeng, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and former Vice President of the University of Science and Technology of China, has been appointed President (Vice Minister) and Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Zhejiang University.

Readers of PhotonBox will not be unfamiliar with Du Jiangfeng. Academician Du Jiangfeng is a leading figure in quantum precision measurement in China, and is known as the "GDP" in the field of quantum information in China, along with two other academicians from the Chinese University of Science and Technology, Guo Guangcan and Pan Jianwei.

In the afternoon of December 27, Du Jiangfeng said goodbye to China University of Science and Technology, where he had been studying and teaching for more than 30 years, and arrived at Zhejiang University on the shore of West Lake to start a new journey in his life.

In 2015, Du was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The scene of Zhejiang University faculty cadre meeting, the first from left is the new president Du Jiangfeng

A quantum leader from the junior class

Du Jiangfeng was born in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province in June 1969. In 1983, Du Jiangfeng graduated from junior high school and made the first important decision of his life, when junior college was the more popular choice. His parents wanted him to go to junior college, however, Du Jiangfeng always had a dream of going to college in his heart. In order to have a look at the university, he directly revised his own voluntary education and successfully entered Jiangsu Tianyi High School to continue his education.

In 1985, at the age of 16, Jiangfeng Du passed the written test and interview for the junior class at the University of Science and Technology of China and was directly guaranteed admission to the junior class. Out of his interest in particle physics and nuclear physics, he was transferred to the Department of Modern Physics, where he went from B.S., M.S. to Ph.

In 1998, Jiangfeng Du became a lecturer in the Department of Physics at the Chinese University of Science and Technology and started his research on quantum computing. At that time, there was neither research funding nor experimental conditions. At that time, the only instrument available to the University was the nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer in the Department of Biology, which they had to use for their experiments. For about 10 years, Jiangfeng Du borrowed the equipment from the Department of Biology.

After the success of the first experiment, Du Jiangfeng borrowed some of the funds from the university, and the research was gradually put on the right track. Although the experimental equipment was still in short supply, Du Jiangfeng achieved one research result after another.

In 2002, for the first time in the world, Jiangfeng Du successfully realized the experimental study of quantum gaming and published it in Physical Review Letters. This was the first time that domestic experimental research work on quantum computing was published in this international authoritative journal.

In 2003, Jiangfeng Du successfully observed the geometric phase of an arbitrary quantum state for the first time in the international arena. The reviewers of Physical Review Letters praised it as "a new research direction for the realization of high-precision, low-noise, and self-tolerant quantum computers in the future".

In 2009, a research group led by Jiangfeng Du achieved optimal kinetic decoupling and improved electron spin coherence time through the experimental technique of electron spin resonance for the first time in the world through solid-state system experiments. This result was published in the journal Nature.

Jiangfeng Du

Unlike others, Du Jiangfeng took the magnetic resonance route in the field of quantum computing, whether it was nuclear magnetic resonance, or electron spin magnetic resonance research, which was done on a purchased commercial spectrometer.

At that time, due to teaching and research needs, Du Jiangfeng had purchased an electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer from a foreign company, but encountered a temporary price increase from the foreign company. This incident deeply stimulated Du's team. Then Du Jiangfeng set a new goal for himself: one day to achieve the leap from purchasing instruments to developing them independently.

After 2009, Du Jiangfeng's team deepened their research into the field of light-detected magnetic resonance, and the purchased spectrometer could no longer meet the experimental demand, so they had to try to design and build a new scientific spectrometer by themselves. When his students recalled that experience, they said that the series of scientific results they achieved later were "completely forced out".

Since then, Jiangfeng Du's team has been trying to design and build new scientific spectrometers on their own to meet their scientific research at the single-molecule level. The lab is not large in size, including himself, about 10 people, basically all young people. Such a young team has shown an amazing commitment and passion for scientific research, which in turn has burst out with great energy.

In March 2015, the research team led by Jiangfeng Du once again created an amazing research result: using the nitrogen-vacancy site defect (NV color center) in diamond as a quantum probe (referred to as "diamond probe"), they selected an important protein in cell division as a probe object, and applied quantum technology to a single protein The first magnetic resonance spectrum of a single protein molecule in the world was obtained under room temperature and atmospheric conditions.

The results were published in Science, a leading international journal, and were praised in the "Outlook" section of Science as "a milestone on the path to real-time imaging of single protein molecules in living cells. This magnetic resonance method, which uses diamonds as "probes" to make previously invisible things "visible," has promising applications in many fields, including chemistry, materials, and life.

With a series of contributions, Jiangfeng Du was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015 at the age of 46. In 2016, he was elected as one of the "People of Science and Technology Innovation" for achieving the highest accuracy level of noise-resistant solid-state spin quantum control and time-optimal quantum control at that time, and in 2019, he was elected as one of the "People of Science and Technology Innovation" for the world's first observation of cosmological time in the single-spin regime. In 2019, he was elected as the Chinese Science Newsmaker of the Year for the first symmetry-breaking observation in the single-spin system.

Biography of Jiangfeng Du

Jiangfeng Du, male, Han nationality, is a physicist, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and President of Zhejiang University.

Du Jiangfeng, President of Zhejiang University

Born in 1969 in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China, Jiangfeng Du received his bachelor's degree in 1985-1990 from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in the Department of Juvenile and Modern Physics, and his master's and doctoral degrees in 1997 and 2000, respectively, from USTC. From 2005 to 2007, he was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Dortmund, Germany. From 2012 to 2018, he served as the Vice Dean and Executive Dean of the School of Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China. He was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015, and has been a member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of the University of Science and Technology of China since April 2018.

He is mainly engaged in experimental research on quantum physics and its applications. He has developed innovative quantum physics experimental techniques such as spin quantum regulation and kinetic decoupling, combined with the successful development of a series of high-performance magnetic resonance experimental equipment, which has improved the sensitivity and resolution of magnetic resonance detection to the international leading level, and achieved important international impact research results in the field of quantum physics applied to precision measurement science and information science. He has published more than 170 academic papers (including 2 in Science, 2 in Nature, 9 in Nature subseries, and 32 in PRL); he has been invited to give invited presentations at international conferences held by the American Physical Society and the Chemical Society, the Asia-Pacific Paramagnetic Resonance Society, etc. He received the second prize of National Natural Science Award (2012), the first prize of Natural Science Award of Ministry of Education (2011), Huang Kun Physics Award of Chinese Physical Society (2010-2011), "Basic Science Award" of Zhou Guangzhao Foundation (2016), and Science and Technology Award of China Society for Analysis and Testing (2015) as the first author. Special Prize (2015), etc.