Ali Yazdani is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Princeton University, Co-director of the Princeton , and Director of the . He graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in physics and later earned his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University in 1995. He taught physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and was a visiting professor at Stanford University. He started his own independent research group at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign before joining Princeton University's Physics Department in 2005. His areas of research are in advancing our understanding of emergent quantum phenomena by application and development of high-resolution microscopy techniques to directly visualize highly entangled quantum states of matter. He has been recognized by several awards and honors including a Humboldt research award and was elected a Fellow of American Physical Society, American Association for Advancement of Science, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the APS awarded him the , which recognizes outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics.