Recently, Prof. Marja Makarow, President of the Academia Europaea, sent a letter to Prof. YUAN Xiaocong, Chief Scientist of the Research Center for Frontier Fundamental Studies of Zhejiang Lab (ZJ Lab), congratulating him on his election as a Member of Academia Europaea (MAE).

YUAN Xiaocong serves as Chief Scientist and Director of ZJ Lab's Research Center for Frontier Fundamental Studies, Distinguished Professor of the Chang Jiang Scholars Program of the Ministry of Education, Chair Professor of Shenzhen University, Member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council Discipline Appraisal Group, Fellow of the Chinese Optical Society (FCOS), Fellow of the Optical Society of America (Optica F), Fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (FSPIE), and Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP). He received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from Tianjin University in 1985 and 1988, respectively, and his doctorate from King's College London in 1994. Since then, he worked at various universities, including the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University, Nanyang Technological University, Nankai University, and Shenzhen University.

Prof. YUAN Xiaocong is mainly engaged in fundamental research on optical field modulation, research on optical surface wave sensing and photoacoustic pathologic diagnosis, applied research on optical field modulation and optical interconnect, and has made many pioneering contributions. Internationally, he discovered the new conceptual optical skyrmions in experiment, where topological degrees of freedom are introduced into structured light fields for the first time, providing a new way to develop new highly robust optical applications. By studying intrinsic spin-orbit coupling properties, the fine structure at deep subwavelength scale is discovered, which provides a new means to explore new mechanisms and phenomena of light-matter interaction at atomic scales and picometer photonics. By using micro-nano optical field modulation technology and devices, the problems of high capacity, wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) compatibility and transmission stability for mode division multiplexed (MDM) optical interconnects are solved under an umbrella of his patented core tehniques for short-range optical interconnect. Given that rapid clinical intraoperative pathologic diagnosis is in great demand, he proposed a label-free, high-resolution photoacoustic pathologic microscopy based on optical surface wave sensing for the first time in the world, providing a fast and accurate innovative technical means for the intraoperative pathologic diagnosis of major diseases such as malignant tumors.

Prof. YUAN Xiaocong has long been active in international academic circles. He has published more than 600 papers in high-impact academic journals such as Science, Nature Photonics, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Physical Review Letters and PNAS, and is currently the editor-in-chief of Advanced Photonics, a top-ranked international journal in fields of optics and photonics. His research findings have made a significant impact across various fields, resulting in the granting of more than 30 invention patents. He has been honored with the China Excellent Patent Award, the Second-Class Award in the Natural Science category in the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) from the Ministry of Education, and the Second Prize of Shenzhen Natural Science Award. Additionally, he has been consistently recognized as a "Highly Cited Chinese Researcher" and has been listed among the World's Top 2% Scientists for several consecutive years.

Next, Prof. YUAN Xiaocong, as Director of ZJ Lab's Research Center for Frontier Fundamental Studies, will lead frontier fundamental research teams to carry out forward-looking and exploratory research based on the new development plan "1397" path and centered on intelligent computing, so as to realize the deep integration of photons and electrons, explore new optical interconnect architecture, make innovations in photoelectric interaction, improve photoelectric conversion efficiency, solve bottlenecks in communication power consumption, energy efficiency and latency, and build ultrahigh-speed optical interconnects featuring high bandwidth, low power consumption and low latency, thus enabling ZJ Lab's development of high-performance computing systems.