Quantum Foundry Faculty Member an Award from the American Physical Society

Except from the UCSB Current

Chris Van de Walle, a distinguished professor of materials at UC Santa Barbara, has been awarded the American Physical Society’s 2025 Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics, the highest honor given by APS for work in that field. The prize, which dates back to 1993, honors Rahman, a founder of the field of molecular dynamics who pioneered computational methods for modeling physical systems.

“I was overjoyed to learn I had been selected to receive the Rahman Prize,” said Van de Walle, an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of APS, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Materials Research Society, and the American Vacuum Society. “The past recipients of the prize are scientists whom I greatly admire and who have had a major impact on physics, and I feel deeply honored to join their ranks.”

Van de Walle performs computational work to develop a fundamental understanding of the physics and chemistry of materials in order to improve existing materials and discover new ones. His work on interfaces has assisted generations of semiconductor physicists in designing novel heterostructures, and his methodologies have helped guide the development of devices such as transistors and lasers, and, recently, the structures that underlie novel qubits. 

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