Ali Yazdani is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Princeton University, Co-director of the Princeton Quantum Initiative(Link is external), and Director of the Princeton Center for Complex Materials(Link is external). 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 2023 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize(Link is external), which recognizes outstanding theoretical or experimental contributions to condensed matter physics.