Yale University has announced that faculty member Fengnian Xia was named the Barton L. Weller Assistant Professor in Engineering and Science.

Xia’s research interests include light-matter interaction and photonic devices; carrier transport and electronic devices; device applications in imaging, communications, and electronics; and integration of emerging and traditional materials. He heads a research group, the Laboratory of Emerging Materials and Devices, in Yale’s Department of Electrical Engineering. The group explores basic properties of emerging low-dimensional materials, builds functional devices based on these materials, and identifies their applications in photonics and electronics. Xia has authored or co-authored close to 70 journal articles and has given over 50 talks worldwide. He holds 14 U.S. patents with eight others pending. In addition, he is a member of IEEE, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

Xia joined Yale’s School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2013, the same year he was listed as one of MIT’s Innovators Under 35 for research on replacing silicon with graphene to control the flow of electricity. Prior to Yale, Xia was at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering received from Princeton in 2005. His undergraduate degree was earned at Tsinghua University in Beijing.