The 2023 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award, China’s top scientific honor, was granted to academician Xue Qikun for his outstanding contribution to scientific and technological innovation.

Born in 1963, Xue, an internationally renowned experimental physicist, once earned the State Natural Science Award in 2018, China's highest accolade for basic research, for his experimental discovery of the quantum anomalous Hall effect. He is dedicated to research in the fields of scanning tunneling microscopy, molecular beam epitaxy, topological insulator quantum matter, and high-temperature superconductivity.  

Xue is a professor of Tsinghua’s Department of Physics, president of the Southern University of Science and Technology, and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the first Chinese national to win the Fritz London Memorial Prize and the first Chinese national to win the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize.

Professor Xue joined Tsinghua from 2005, going on to serve as the dean of the School of Sciences, director of the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, director of the Research & Development Affairs Office, and Tsinghua vice president. He was appointed president of the Southern University of Science and Technology in 2020.

Since 2008, Xue has led a team composed of researchers from Tsinghua's Department of Physics and the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, achieving a series of significant advancements in the experimental research of topological insulators and superconductors.