Chuan Zhang holds a Doctor of Engineering degree in nuclear techniques and applications from Peking University (2005) and a Ph.D. degree in physics from Goethe-University Frankfurt (2009). In 2010, he received the Juan Antonio Rubio – Paul Govaerts EUROTRANS – ENEN Prize at the EUROSAFE Forum. As a side activity, he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, from 2010 to 2013. Joining GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in 2013, he contributed to the FAIR project's project management office and in parallel focused on linear accelerator design and space charge physics as an accelerator physicist. Presently, he leads the R&D team for stochastic cooling physics and technology at GSI. In 2023, he completed his habilitation and obtained the title of Privatdozent (a qualification for professorship in many European countries) from the Department of Physics at Goethe-University Frankfurt. Additionally, in 2023, he became a short-term invited fellow at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Japan, a principal investigator at the Helmholtz Research Academy Hesse for FAIR in Germany, and the GSI-Representative (Observer) of the ESS (European Spallation Source) Accelerator Collaboration Board in Sweden.
With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Zhang has specialized in RF linear accelerators, particularly Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) accelerators. Many accelerators designed by him, such as the EBIS-RFQ at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the CW HLI-RFQ at GSI, the China ADS Injector-II RFQ and the PIP2IT RFQ at Fermilab (the latter two in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), and the MYRRHA RFQ at Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, have demonstrated exceptional performance and have been in successful operation for many years.