FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Jak Chakhalian, professor of physics at the University of Arkansas, has been awarded a senior foreign visiting professorship by the Institute of Physics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The institute awards three professorships a year. Each award allows a senior foreign professor outside of China to conduct research for up to three months at the institute. Chakhalian will begin his professorship in June.

“I am honored to be among those chosen for this extremely competitive and prestigious award,” Chakhalian said.

Chakhalian will work in the institute’s State Key Laboratory for Surface Physics in Beijing. The laboratory, founded in 1987, includes 20 faculty members and nearly 50 graduate students. Its mission is to explore the fundamental aspects of novel phenomena at surfaces and interfaces, with a combination of atom-resolved experimental tools and first principle calculations.

His research interests focus on the fabrication and characterization of artificial quantum materials, with a particular emphasis on strongly correlated oxide nanostructures. He has published numerous articles in scientific journals, including three papers that appeared in a Nature publication in 2013.

Chakhalian, who joined the U of A faculty in 2006, holds the Charles E. and Clydene Scharlau Endowed Professorship and directs the Laboratory for Artificial Quantum Materials at the University of Arkansas.