Photo taken on Feb. 25, 2016 shows Pan Jianwei at a lab in the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province. For his role in pushing forward the development of quantum communications, Chinese physicist Pan Jianwei has been included in Nature's 10, the annual list of 10 people who mattered in science in 2017, which was released online Dec. 18, 2017 by the prestigious British journal "Nature". Dubbed "Father of Quantum" by some in China, Pan Jianwei and his team harnessed quantum laws to transmit information securely, called quantum communications. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)

 
Renowned Chinese quantum physicist Pan Jianwei is this year's ZEISS Research Award for his contributions to the field of optical quantum information, according to the University of Science and Technology of China where he works as a professor.

One of the most remarkable results of Pan's research is the distribution of entangled photons over a distance of 1,200 km, by far the longest distance ever reached, ZEISS said in an announcement on its website, noting that he has also contributed significantly to the development of optical quantum computing.

ZEISS is a technology enterprise operating in the fields of optics and optoelectronics. The award is presented every two years to those who have demonstrated outstanding achievements in the field of optics or photonics.

The award will be presented to Pan in 2021 due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, ZEISS said.