Rate My Professor Zi Yang Meng

Zi Yang Meng is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Hong Kong. He obtained his B.Sc. from the University of Science and Technology of China and Ph.D. from the University of Stuttgart, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in the United States and Canada. Prior to joining HKU, he was a Professor at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on quantum many-body computation and the modelling and explanation of quantum materials, developing large-scale numerical simulations utilizing modern field-theoretical and topological insights. Key areas include quantum many-body physics, quantum phase transitions and entanglement, quantum Monte Carlo and tensor networks, explainable AI in physics, computation of quantum entanglement, constrained lattice models and phase transitions, Rydberg atom arrays and long-range interactions, and 2D moiré quantum materials.

Meng has published approximately 170 research articles in prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Physics, Science Advances, PNAS, and Physical Review Letters. Notable publications include “Emergent glassy behavior in a kagome Rydberg atom array” (Physical Review Letters, 2023), “Intrinsic nonlinear Hall effect and gate-switchable Berry curvature sliding in twisted bilayer graphene” (Physical Review Letters, 2023, Editors’ Suggestion), “Fermion disorder operator at Gross-Neveu and deconfined quantum criticalities” (Physical Review Letters, 2023), “Thermodynamic characteristic for correlated flat-band system with quantum anomalous Hall ground state” (Physical Review Letters, 2023), “Scaling of entanglement entropy at deconfined quantum criticality” (Physical Review Letters, 2022), “Triangular lattice quantum dimer model with variable dimer density” (Nature Communications, 2022), and “Realization of Topological Mott Insulator in a Twisted Bilayer Graphene Lattice Model” (Nature Communications, 2021). He serves as an editorial board member of Reports on Progress in Physics and is a Mercator Fellow of the German Research Foundation. He was awarded the 2020 Tianhe Star Award for outstanding accomplishments in computational oriented research.