Xiang Zhang is Ernest Kuh Professor at UC Berkeley and Director of Materials Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is an elected member of US National Academy of Engineering, Academia Sinica, and Chinese Academy of Sciences. His work was selected as "Top-Ten Scientific Discoveries" in 2008 by Times Magazine. He received PhD from UC Berkeley in 1996 and was on faculty at Penn State and UCLA prior to joining the Berkeley faculty in 2004.

Professor Zhang’s research in metamaterials, nano-photonics and materials physics has made profound impacts. His groundbreaking work includes demonstrations of the first magnetic response of metamaterials at far-IR, the first optical super-lens, the first optical negative index in bulk materials, the first optical invisibility cloak, and the first semiconductor plasmon laser. He has published over 280 journal papers including over 60 in Science, Nature series and PRL, and given over 300 Keynote, Plenary and Invited talks.

For his work, he has been elected a Fellow of the Society and received the 2016 Max Born Award.