Yuan Cao (Chinese : 曹原 ; pinyin : Cáo Yuán) is a Chinese electrical engineer and physicist. His research is focused on the properties of two-dimensional materials. He discovered that a stack of two sheets of graphene, cooled to 1.7 K, could act as a superconductor or as an insulator when exposed to an electric field. In 2018, Nature chose him as one of 10 people who mattered that year in science, calling him a "graphene wrangler."