Liang Wu Receives $1 Million for Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Liang Wu, an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy, has been awarded $1 million from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory’s prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), which incentivizes early career university faculty to pursue fundamental research in areas that could have significant impact on Army operational capabilities and related technologies.
 
The award recognizes Wu’s overall achievements and his proposed research on topological nonlinear optics. His proposal is also under consideration for the White House Honorary PECASE award—the highest honor bestowed by the United States government to those who show exceptional promise in their fields.
 
Wu is an experimental condensed matter physicist who employs light spanning the visible, infrared, and terahertz spectral range to probe quantum mechanical features of solid matter. Using these techniques, he has demonstrated the power of this approach in his work at Penn, carrying out pioneering research on topological semimetals, two-dimensional quantum magnets, and novel ordering in frustrated lattice structures.
 
Wu, who earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Nanjing University and a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University, was also named a 2025 Sloan Fellow, honored as an early-career researcher and scholar for his accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in his fields. Jason Altschuler and Anderson Ye Zhang of the Wharton School and César de la Fuente of the Perelman School of Medicine also received the Sloan fellowship.