HEFEI, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Pan Jianwei, a renowned Chinese physicist and professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) won the 2019 R. W. Wood Prize presented by the Optical Society of America (OSA), the university said Friday.

It is the first time that a Chinese scientist has won the prize with a local research project since the award was established in 1975.

According to the prize announcement, Pan is awarded for his pioneering experimental research at the frontier of quantum foundations and optical implementations of quantum information, including quantum nonlocality, quantum key distribution, quantum teleportation, and optical quantum computing.

The R. W. Wood Prize was established to honor the many contributions that American physicist and inventor Robert Williams Wood made to optics, which recognizes outstanding discoveries, scientific or technical achievements, or inventions in the field. Former winners include Nobel Prize in Physics laureates such as Carl E. Wieman and Gérard Mourou.