Walter Kohn Prize Announced

ICTP and the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation have announced that the winner of the 2026 Walter Kohn Prize is Wan-Jian Yin, a professor at Sochoow University, China. 

The award recognizes Wan-Jian Yin’s pioneering contributions to computational materials science via the integration of first-principle calculations and artificial intelligence, which have accelerated materials discovery and enabled the prediction, inverse design and synthesis planning of property-targeted new materials.

The award ceremony will take place at ICTP on 14 January 2027 during the International Workshop on Computational Physics and Materials Science: Total Energy and Force Methods.

About the awardee

Wan-Jian Yin is a professor at Soochow University, in China. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, after which he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, USA, and as an research assistant professor at the University of Toledo, USA. He joined Soochow University in 2015. His research interests are in AI physics and materials design.

About the prize

 The Walter Kohn Prize for pioneering contributions to computational materials science was established in 2016 by ICTP and the Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation (QEF) in honour of Chemistry Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn, a leading condensed matter physicist who developed density functional theory (DFT), a method that drastically reduces the amount of computing power needed to model the properties of complex materials, without compromising the accuracy of a model’s simulations. DFT has had a big impact on a wide range of fields, including chemistry, molecular physics, medicine and engineering. Thanks to its low computing costs and the wide availability of open-source modeling software, DFT has also opened the way to contributions from scientists from disadvantaged countries who have little access to huge supercomputers. The prize is awarded jointly by ICTP and the QEF every two years.

 The Quantum ESPRESSO Foundation is home to some of the most popular and internationally recognised open-source codes for quantum-mechanical materials modelling, mainly based on density functional theory. ICTP and QEF regularly organise schools on computer simulations of materials, especially in developing countries. 

For more details, see the Walter Kohn Prize web page at https://www.ictp.it/prize/walter-kohn-prize