Research interests: molecular beam epitaxy; quantum-dot and quantum-well photonic devices
Biography
Professor Zbig Wasilewski is professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, cross-appointed to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo. Wasilewski also holds a University of Waterloo Endowed Chair in Nanotechnology and an Associate Faculty position at the Institute for Quantum Computing. He is internationally renowned for his contributions to the field of Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), quantum-dot and quantum-well photonic devices, as well as quantum structures and devices based on high mobility 2D electron gases, such as lateral few-electron quantum dot circuits – potential building blocks of quantum computers.
Wasilewski’s research interests include MBE and nanofabrication of III-V semiconductor structures for quantum optics, photonics, nanoelectronics and quantum computing applications. The MBE laboratory, led by Wasilewski, has demonstrated THz Quantum Cascade Lasers with the world’s highest operating temperatures. These devices are among the most complex man-made quantum structures, comprising close to 2000 quantum wells and barriers, with thicknesses controlled to a fraction of atomic layer. Recently his research has expanded to the growth of ultra-high purity, single crystal aluminum layers for superconducting resonators with applications in quantum computing and plasmonics.
Wasilewski received his MSc degree in Physics from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and subsequently joined the Semiconductor Physics Research Group at the Institute of High Pressure Physics, where he worked until 1986. During that period he focused primarily on low-temperature magneto-optical studies of semiconductors under high hydrostatic pressures (up to 25,000 atmospheres). Much of this research he conducted in the Professor R.A. Stradling Laboratories in the Physics Department, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He earned his doctoral degree from the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1986. In 1988, after a post-doctoral appointment at the Imperial College, London, where he expanded his work to other material systems and nanostructures, he joined the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), shifting his research focus to molecular beam epitaxial growth and characterization of quantum structures and devices based on III-V semiconductor compounds. In 2006, Wasilewski was promoted to Principal Research Officer - NRC’s top research rank. In July 2012, Wasilewski joined the University of Waterloo as a full Professor and a University of Waterloo Endowed Chair in Nanotechnology.
Wasilewski is a co-author of more than 450 refereed journal and conference proceedings articles (over 11,000 citations to his work with an h-index of 51 and i10–index of 188 – Google Scholar, 2016). In 2012, Wasilewski was awarded the title of Professor of Physics by the President of Poland, in recognition of his exceptional track record in research and his role in developing the field of GaN-based optoelectronics in Poland.
Education
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PhD, Semiconductor Physics, Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences
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MSc, Semiconductor Physics, University of Warsaw, Poland
