After two years of performing industrial research with
Bell Laboratories at
Murray Hill, New Jersey, Chu was appointed
assistant professor of physics at
Cleveland State University in 1970. He was subsequently promoted to
associate professor and professor of physics in 1973 and 1975, respectively. In 1979, Chu became a professor of physics at the
University of Houston, an appointment he still holds. In 1987, he and
Maw-Kuen Wu announced the historic discovery of
superconductivity above 77 K in
YBCO, and the
Comstock Prize in Physics in 1988, and the American Physical Society's
International Prize for New Materials. He was an invited contributor to the White House National Millennium Time Capsule at the National Archives in 2000 and was selected the Best Researcher in the U.S. by
U.S. News & World Report in 1990. In 1989, Chu was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences,
Chinese Academy of Sciences (foreign member),
Academia Sinica, Russian Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the
Third World Academy of Sciences. His research activities extend beyond superconductivity to
magnetism and
dielectrics. On November 17, 2014, an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing plaque was presented to
University of Houston for Chu and his team's 1987 discovery of high temperature superconductors. On September 1, 2001, Chu succeeded Professor
Chia-Wei Woo as the president of
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Chu's tenure as university president ended officially on 1 September 2009. On November 5, 2011, Chu was appointed as the founding President of the
Taiwan Comprehensive University System (TCUS). == Personal life ==