Zongfu Yu named 2026 IEEE Fellow

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has named Zongfu Yu, the Grainger Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to its 2026 class of fellows

IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for a select few IEEE members with outstanding records of accomplishment in any of the fields covered by organization.

Yu is cited for his contributions to computational photonics. His research in optics and photonics spans the areas of classical computation, quantum electrodynamics, quantum optics, visual perception, topological photonics, integrated photonics and radiative cooling. He is a Fellow of Optica and recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a DARPA Young Faculty Award. Yu is listed on more than 10 patents and patent applications and has appeared on the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list every year since 2018.

Yu is also co-founder of Flexcompute, a company developing high-fidelity physics simulations to accelerate and enhance hardware design and development. Its products include Tidy3D, a scalable electromagnetics simulator that works tens or thousands of times faster than other simulation methods.

The IEEE is the world’s foremost professional association for advancing technology for humanity. With more than 400,000 members from 160 countries, the association is a leading authority in a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.

Yu is one of 16 ECE faculty and active emeritus professors with IEEE Fellow status.