Rate My Professor Zhiliang Yuan

Zhiliang Yuan is Chief Scientist at the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS) in the Division of Quantum Materials and Devices. He completed doctoral and postdoctoral training at the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1993–1997) and the University of Oxford (1997–2001), followed by a twenty-year research career at Toshiba Cambridge Laboratory. He serves as Changjiang Chair Professor (2023), Fellow of the Institute of Physics (2021), and Optica Fellow (2023). Dr. Yuan is an expert in quantum communication and quantum photonics, with contributions that have defined performance frontiers in the field. In quantum key distribution, he established milestones including the first 100 km (2003) and 600 km (2020) fiber-based demonstrations, as well as the first Mb/s (2008) and 10 Mb/s (2018) secure key rates. His innovations include the self-differencing single-photon detector (2007), UNIC single-photon detector (2023), directly phase-modulated source (2016), and twin-field QKD protocol (2018). In quantum-dot photonics, he created the first single-photon LED (2002) and developed the pure-state resonance-fluorescence model. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and holds more than 70 patents granted in the US, UK, and China. Selected publications include works on Purcell-enhanced two-photon emission (Nature Materials, 2026), polarized single-photon emission (Physical Review Letters, 2026), coherence in resonance fluorescence (Nature Communications, 2025), experimental quantum communication overcoming the rate-loss limit (Physical Review Letters, 2023), twin-field quantum key distribution (Nature Communications, 2023), compact single-photon detector modules (Advanced Devices & Instrumentation, 2023), overcoming the rate-distance limit of QKD (Nature, 2018), high-speed single-photon detection (Applied Physics Letters, 2007), QKD over 122 km of fiber (Applied Physics Letters, 2004), and electrically driven single-photon sources (Science, 2002).