Penn State Physicist Jainendra Jain to Lead India's New Lodha Theoretical Physics Institute

In a landmark moment for Indian science, Penn State physicist Jainendra K. Jain, one of the world's most distinguished theoretical physicists and winner of the 2025 Wolf Prize in Physics, has been named the founding director of the Lodha Theoretical Physics Institute (LTPI) in Mumbai, established by the Lodha Foundation, one of India's leading philanthropic organisations.

Jain, who holds the Evan Pugh University Professorship and the Eberly Family Chair in Physics at Penn State, will lead the new institute while maintaining his full faculty appointment in the United States. His vision for LTPI is bold: internationally competitive faculty, a vibrant visitors programme and an environment explicitly designed to generate "bold ideas and seminal, transformative discoveries."

The appointment carries deep personal meaning. Jain, who grew up in India and earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees there before completing his doctorate at Stony Brook University in 1985, called the role "a very special opportunity to educate and nurture a new generation of scientists in my country of birth."​

Scientifically, Jain is celebrated for introducing the theory of composite fermions, a groundbreaking concept that reshaped the understanding of quantum matter and opened pathways toward quantum computing and high performance electronics. The Lodha Foundation framed his appointment as central to India's broader "Viksit Bharat" ambition, the government of India's initiative to make the country a fully developed nation by 2047.