He received his PhD from the University of Vienna in Austria, where he studied and worked in the group led by Nobel prize winning physicist Anton Zeilinger.

One of the devices, named "Zuchongzhi 2.1", was claimed to be one million times faster than its nearest competitor, Google's Sycamore.

[12] Pan was elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011 at the age of 41, making him one of the youngest CAS academicians.

[13] He was then elected to the World Academy of Sciences in 2012 and won the International Quantum Communication Award in the same year.

His team's work on double quantum-teleportation was selected as the Physics World "Top Breakthrough of the Year" in 2015.