The Foundation announced this year’s recipients on Oct. 15.

Xie, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute, creates atomically thin materials for energy-efficient electronics. The rapid growth of artificial intelligence applications and their soaring power consumption has created a pressing need for electronic devices that offer higher performance while consuming less energy. Xie’s lab is addressing this need by combining materials in new ways at the atomic level, creating novel materials with precisely controlled properties. These materials are poised to radically increase the efficiency of advanced information processing and storage devices and enable breakthroughs for quantum technologies.

“Saien has made seminal contributions to the field of quantum materials and devices,” said Richard A. Register, Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and director of the Princeton Materials Institute. “As a Packard Fellow, Saien will be able to delve into the physics of these materials, and use that understanding to engineer energy-efficient electronics. I’m really excited to see what discoveries will emerge from this project.”

The Packard Foundation awards fellows $875,000 over five years to pursue their research. The fellowship is designed to encourage innovative thinking by providing unrestricted funds. Former Packard Fellows have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals, Alan T. Waterman Awards, Breakthrough Prizes, and elections to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

“The micro and nanofabrication methods we have been using for 50 years to make microchips and electronics better are running up against a fundamental wall,” said James Sturm, the Stephen R. Forrest Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and chair of the electrical and computer engineering department. “Thinking and inventing down to an atomic level like Saien is doing, most spectacularly I should add, is the future.”

Xie joined the Princeton faculty in 2022, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Along with his position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute, Xie is also associated faculty in the Princeton Quantum Initiative.

In 2023, Xie received an award from Princeton’s Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund to develop miniature imaging devices using his atomically thin materials, a collaboration with Antoine Kahn, the Stephen C. Macaleer ‘63 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science and vice dean of engineering.