2019 Quantum Innovators in science and engineering participants

Christian Kraglund Anderson, ETH Zürich Lindsay LeBlanc, University of Alberta 
Carlos Antón-Solanas, Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies Peter McMahon, Cornell University
Brynle Barrett, iXblue Zlatko Minev, IBM and Yale University
Boris Braverman, University of Ottawa Sara Mouradian, University of California, Berkeley

Gretchen Campbell, Joint Quantum Institute, NIST, UMD College Park

Hari Nair, Cornell University
Sara Campbell, University of California, Berkeley Crystal Noel, Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland
Adolfo del Campo, Donostia International Physics Center Ahmed Omran, Harvard University
Aurelia Chenu, Donostia International Physics Center Martin Sandberg, IBM
Christie Chiu, Princeton University Brendan Shields, University of Basel
Logan Clark, University of Chicago Aziza Suleymanzade, University of Chicago
Alexandre Cooper-Roy, University of Waterloo Rahul Trivedi, Stanford University
Diana Prado Lopes Aude Craik, Harvard University Chiao-Hsuan Wang, University of Chicago

Adèle Hilico, Laboratory for Photonics, Numbers and Nanosciences
- OLGS (Institute of Optics Graduate School ) / CRNS / University of Bordeaux

Wenchao Xu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Christian Kraglund Andersen, ETH Zürich

I started my studies at the Aarhus University in Denmark. I was always interested in exploring the boundaries of physics, and quantum computing sparked my interest as a real application that would take advantage of the peculiarities of quantum theory for
improved computational power. I therefore decided to continue my studies with a PhD in the group of Prof. Mølmer. As a topic
for my PhD, I studied new approaches for quantum optics and quantum computation with superconducting circuits. During my
PhD studies I spent 6 months at University of Sherbrooke, Canada, where I started a fruitful collaboration with Prof.
Alexandre Blais. After my PhD, I wanted to explore the real realizations of quantum computers and, thus, I pursued a postdoc
in the experimental laboratory of Prof. Andreas Wallraff at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Since, the start of my postdoc, I have
become gradually more engaged in the practical realities of experimental quantum computing with superconducting circuits. I aim at understanding all aspects of quantum computing from the real- world experimental challenges to the high-level theoretical concepts of quantum information.


I obtained my master studies at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2011.

In 2015, I completed my PhD studies in the experimental semiconductor group of Prof. Luis Viña (Dept. Physics of Materials, Univ. Autónoma de Madrid), on the applications and fundamental properties of exciton-polaritons.

In April 2015, I joined the group of Prof. Pascale Senellart, in the Laboratory of Photonics and Nanostructures (Marcoussis, France). During my postdoc, I worked on the realisation of efficient quantum photonic devices with quantum dots deterministically coupled to micropillar cavities. Using such devices, I generated a near-optimal emission of single indistinguishable photons and demonstrated a highly efficient light-matter interfacing operating at the single photon level.

In 2016, I received a Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship (SQUAPH) to research on: (i) the photonic scalability of quantum computing and (ii) the generation of photonic qubits and qutrits exploiting the quantum superposition in the photon number basis.

My current research interests are focused on quantum optical technologies based on solid- state single photon sources.

Brynle Barrett, iXblue

Brynle is a senior research & development scientist at iXblue—a French company that specializes in fiber-optic gyroscopes, inertial navigation and photonics—with expertise in quantum inertial sensors, atom optics and matter-wave interferometry. He received his BSc in physics and mathematics from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax in 2005. Following these studies, Brynle was awarded the Canada Graduate Scholarship to carry out his doctoral work at York University in Toronto. In 2012, he received his PhD in physics for his research on new experimental techniques in cold-atom interferometry and their application toward precision measurements of fundamental constants and inertial sensing. He was then awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship from the French space agency (CNES) to carry out research on a mobile dual-species interferometer and a new test of Einstein’s equivalence principle with cold atoms at the LP2N laboratory (Laboratoire Photonique, Numerique et Nanoscience) in Bordeaux, France. Since 2015, Brynle has been working for iXblue on a joint academic-industrial project that aims to develop cold-atom technology for mobile inertial sensing applications. He is currently developing a three- axis hybrid quantum-classical accelerometer for inertial navigation, and a field-deployable all-fibered laser system at 780 nm. Brynle is the author of two industrial patents pertaining to quantum inertial sensors and 30 peer-reviewed publications in the field of atomic, molecular and optical physics.

Boris Braverman, University of Ottawa

Boris Braverman attended the University of Toronto for his B.Sc., and subsequently obtained his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- ogy working in the group of Vladan Vuleti ́c, where he built an experiment for demonstrating precision im- provements in optical lattice clocks using quantum entanglement. He is presently a Banting Postdoc- toral Fellow in the group of Robert Boyd at the Uni- versity of Ottawa, studying the generation, manipu- lation, and detection of high-dimensional entangled states of light, with applications to quantum imaging and communication.

Gretchen Campbell, Joint Quantum Institute, NIST, UMD College Park

Gretchen Campbell is the co-director of the Joint Quantum Institute, a joint institute between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland. Dr. Campbell received a B.A in Physics from Wellesley College in 2001, and received her Ph.D from MIT in 2007. From 2006-2009 she was a NRC post-doctoral fellow at JILA in Boulder. Dr. Campbell joined NIST and the JQI in 2009. At the Joint Quantum Institute, she has created the first atomtronic circuits, closed circuits in which cold, superfluid atoms play a role analogous to that of superconducting electrons in electronic circuits. Among the results of this work have been inclusion of a weak-link into a superfluid circuit, the observation of hysteresis in an atomtronic device and the first direct, interferometric measurement of the current-phase relationship of a superfluid weak-link. She is a fellow of the American Physical society, and among other awards received a PECASE in 2012 and the APS Maria Goeppert Mayer Award in 2015.

Sara Campbell received her undergraduate degree in physics from MIT, where she first learnedhow fun it is to play with lasers from Martin Zwierlein’s group. Due to her work as the Society

of Physics Students Vice President, she received the Joel Matthew Orloff Award for outstanding service to the physics department, Institute, or community. Sara also received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Before starting graduate school, she attended a Critical Language Scholarship program with the United States Department of State to study Chinese in Beijing, and then spend a year at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as a visiting researcher.

Sara then joined Jun Ye’s group at JILA, University of Colorado, Boulder and National Institute of Standards and Technology. For her PhD thesis which she received from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2017, Sara and the rest of the strontium team designed and built a new apparatus to make a next-generation clock based on a degenerate Fermi gas in a three- dimensional optical lattice.

Hooked on metrology, but wishing to measure something with more immediate applications, Sara is pursuing her postdoctoral research in cryogenic electron microscopy. Working with a collaboration with professors Holger Müller, Robert Glaeser and Eva Nogales, Sara and the rest of the team have demonstrated the first phase plate for electron microscopy that has a stable phase shift, based on the ponderomotive force from a continuous-wave laser. Sara received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Hanna Gray Fellowship for postdoctoral support and early career research funding.

Outside of lab, Sara loves the mountains and playing with her cat and dog.

Adolfo del Campo, Donostia International Physics Center

Prof. del Campo received his PhD from the University of Basque Country in 2008. His first postdoctoral research position was at Imperial College London and Ulm University. In 2011, he was awarded a Distinguished J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2014, he became an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, receiving tenure in 2018. As of Jan 2019, he is an Ikerbasque research professor at the Donostia International Physics Center, Spain. His research is focused on quantum science and technology with a focus on nonequilibrium phenomena and quantum control. He has co-pioneered protocols known as Shorcuts to Adiabaticity, generalized the Kibble-Zurek Mechanism and contributed to the development of Quantum Speed Limits.

Aurelia Chenu, Donostia International Physics Center

Aurelia Chenu joined the DIPC (Donostia International Physics Center, Spain) as IKERBASQUE Research Fellow in January 2019. Her work aims at pioneering energy sciences. Her PhD the- sis at EPFL (2011) helped develop the technology of the fast-spec- trum nuclear reactors. During her first postdocs at the Charles University in Prague and at the University of Toronto, she devel- oped skills in theoretical physics to investigate how to harvest sun- light, and studied the excitonic energy transfer in Earth’s primary light harvesters – photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes. Her goal is to control the dynamics of complex (open) quantum systems, to provide design principles of innovative energy-efficient technologies. With later postdoctoral studies at MIT and LANL, she strengthened her expertise in quantum op- tics, quantum dynamics and control, and more recently, thermodynamics. Her recent work includes the design of control dynamical schemes, design of friction-free stroke for efficient quantum heat engines, and characterization of work statistics in complex sys- tems. She earned post-doctoral research fellowships from the Canadian government and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Christie Chiu, Princeton University

Christie’s research is focused on quantum simulation of condensed matter systems. She completed her graduate work on Professor Markus Greiner’s lithium quantum gas microscope, where ultracold fermionic lithium loaded into the lowest band of a two-dimensional optical lattice realizes the Hubbard Hamiltonian, a model thought to capture the strongly correlated physics of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors. Currently, she is a postdoc in Professor Andrew Houck’s group at Princeton University, where she is developing techniques to probe quantum Hall physics with superconducting circuits.

Logan W. Clark, University of Chicago

After growing bored with ordinary matter, Logan has pioneered the creation and exploration of exotic new forms of quantum matter made from shaken atoms and light. With doctoral advisor Prof. Cheng Chin at the University of Chicago, Logan demonstrated the power of Floquet engineering, performing one of the first tests of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a quantum phase transition, synthesizing density-dependent gauge fields for cold atoms, and inducing the exotic Bose fireworks. Since earning his Ph.D. in 2017, Logan has been working with Prof. Jonathan Simon to form strongly correlated phases of light. Using a quantum many-body optical system, with strong interactions between photons mediated by Rydberg atoms in a multi-mode cavity, he recently demonstrated the formation of the first topologically ordered light: pairs of optical photons in the spatially entangled Laughlin state.

Alexandre Cooper-Roy, University of Waterloo

Alexandre is delivering quantum simulators to early adopters as Senior Technical Lead in Transformative Quantum Technologies at the University of Waterloo. These quantum simulators provide a programmable interface to simulate the dynamics of interacting spin systems in various geometries with tunable parameters and microscopic control. His team is currently building its first scientific apparatus to simulate quantum spin models using programmable arrays of individual neutral atoms excited to Rydberg states. As an IQIM postdoc at Caltech working with Prof. Manuel Endres, Alexandre pioneered the control of alkaline-earth atoms in optical tweezers and atomic array optical clocks. As a grad student at MIT working with Prof. Paola Cappellaro, Alexandre developed novel quantum sensing techniques using entangled states of electronic spins in diamond. Alexandre holds a MEng from the University of Tokyo, a Diplôme de l’École Polytechnique, and a BEng from École Polytechnique of Montréal.

Diana Prado Lopes Aude Craik, Harvard University

Dr. Diana Prado Lopes Aude Craik is a postdoctoral fellow in physics, working both in Prof. Evelyn Hu’s group and Dr. Ronald Walsworth’s group at Harvard University. She is currently working on studying charge state of nitrogen vacancy defects in diamond. In September 2019, she will begin a Marie Curie Fellowship in the lab of Prof. Vladan Vuletic at MIT, where she will work on precision measurements of trapped Ytterbium ions. She obtained her Bachelor of Science from MIT and her doctorate from Oxford University, where she worked on microwave addressing of trapped-ion qubits.

Adèle Hilico, Laboratory for Photonics, Numbers and Nanosciences - OLGS (Institute of Optics Graduate School) / CRNS / University of Bordeaux

Adèle Hilico studied at the Engineer School “Institut d’Optique Graduate School” where she enrolled into a Master of Physics with a specialty in Nanosciences jointly directed by the Ecole Polytechnique.

In 2011 she then started a PhD at the SYRTE laboratory, in the Inertial Sensor team under the supervision of F. Pereira dos Santos. She worked on a metrological experiment aiming at measuring short-range interactions between an atom and a massive surface. The measurement is realized thanks to atom interferometers using atoms trapped in a 1D vertical optical lattice. The energy levels of atoms in such a trap being shifted from one lattice site to another by the force one aims at measuring.

After graduation, she joined the group of A. Rauschenbeutel as a postdoc, where the worked on a Cavity QED experiment, using a novel type of whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) resonator interfaced via nanofibers as a cavity. This experiment demonstrated the first fiber-integrated quantum optical circulator that is operated by a single atom and that relies on the chiral interaction between emitters and transversally confined light.

Adèle Hilico joined the LP2N laboratory in 2017 as a postdoc, to work on a new type of quantum simulator using ultra-cold atoms in a nano-structured optical lattice. This new hybrid quantum should allow to reduce the inter-atom distance and increase all the energy scales at play.

In 2018, she obtained an Assistant Professor position at the LP2N laboratory, she has a joint appointment with Electrical Engineering and Industrial Computing Department of the University Institute of Technology of Bordeaux. Her research focuses now on designing new high power ultra-low noise versatile fiber lasers sources.

Lindsay LeBlanc, University of Alberta 

Dr. Lindsay LeBlanc is Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Ultracold Quantum Gases. Dr. LeBlanc earned her bachelors degree in Engineer- ing Physics from the University of Alberta in 2003 and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Toronto in 2011, after which she headed to Gaithersburg, MD, where she worked with the Joint Quantum Institute at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. Her Ph.D. and post- doctoral work focused on developing the tools and techniques needed to make and measure systems of ultracold atoms that formed a variety of many-body states, to create communities of ultracold atoms that acted in ways that were different when they were together than when they were individ- ual particles. Currently, Dr. LeBlanc runs a state-of-the-art ultracold quantum gases laboratory at the University of Alberta, which focuses on both fundamental research and practical applications using these very cold atoms. Outside the lab, Dr. LeBlanc enjoys curling, cycling, and cooking, and re-exploring the world through the eyes of her two-year-old kid.

Peter McMahon is an assistant professor in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2014 for research on semiconductor quantum optics. He subsequently studied the design and construction of special-purpose optical and opto-electronic computers for solving optimization problems as a postdoctoral researcher in Applied Physics at Stanford until his appointment at Cornell in 2019.

Zlatko Minev holds a permanent research position at IBM-Q TJ Watson in the quantum research group (Gambetta). Minev received his Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University (2018) in the group of Michel Devoret. For his dissertation, Minev independently proposed and performed an experiment considered beyond the reach of experimental atomic physics. Nature summarized the significance of Minev’s study: “[The] experiment overturns Bohr’s view of quantum jumps, demonstrating that they possess a degree of predictability and when completed are continuous, coherent and even deterministic.” He received his B.A. from UC Berkeley with distinction and high honors (Irfan Siddiqi group). Minev’s research has involved circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED), random circuits, ns-latency feedback control of open quantum systems, stochastic trajectories, superconducting architectures and mesoscopics, quantum microwave design (graph-topological), opto-mechanics (Jack Harris group), and has been featured in mainstream media worldwide (50+ news publications) and live interviews (e.g., NPR). 

Minev founded and currently chairs a nationwide science outreach and career pathways organization (Open Labs, Est. 2012), which works with underrepresented young scholars. For his leadership and service Minev was awarded the Yale-Jefferson Medal for Public Service (2016). He further continues serve the community as a Trustee Advisor to the Board of Yale Graduate Alumni. 

Sara Mouradian received her PhD from MIT in the Quantum Photonics Group on scalable solutions for diamond-based quantum information processing with integrated photonic circuits. She is now a postdocotoral scholar at UC Berkeley working on novel architectures for trapped ion experiments.
Hari Nair is currently a research associate at Cornell University, where he is exploring the growth of ruthenate Ruddlesden-Popper thin films using molecular beam epitaxy. This work has lead to the growth of superconducting Sr2RuO4 thin films, a first in the United States. He has also demonstrated the use of epitaxial strain to tune the electronic and magnetic ground states of Ca2RuO4, a material with potential applications for Mott electronics. Hari received his Ph.D. in ECE from The University of Texas at Austin in 2013. His PhD. work involved molecular beam epitaxy growth of GaSb-based semiconductor alloys to extend the emission wavelength of type-I diode lasers into the 3-5 μm range. This work resulted in the longest wavelength GaSb-based type-I diode laser with an aluminum-free active region. Hari received his B.Tech. in Engineering Physics from IIT Madras in 2006.

Crystal Noel, Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland

Crystal is a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland, College Park. She recently completed her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley on the topic of electric-field noise in ion traps. Her current research interests are in building a large ion trap quantum processer and tackling challenges such as system stability, integration, and reliability. She hopes that such a device will soon be useful for solving complex and interesting physics problems. Crystal enjoys teaching and mentoring undergraduate students both in and out of the classroom. Her hobbies include travel, cooking, and dance.

Ahmed Omran, Harvard University

Ahmed studied Engineering Physics in Germany at the Technical University of Munich from 2006 until 2011. At the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, he then did his PhD on the construction of a microscope to image single fermionic atoms in optical lattices, a system that can be used to simulate the Fermi-Hubbard model to shed light on open questions on quantum magnetism and superconductivity. After graduating in 2016, he moved on to become a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, where he studies arrays of cold atoms trapped in optical tweezers to efficiently study quantum spin models and create a prototype of a scalable quantum processor.

Martin Sandberg, IBM

For the last 5 years Martin Sandberg has been a research staff member in IBM’s experimental quantum computing group. He received his PhD in microecology and nanoscience from Chalmers University in Sweden. Before joining IBM, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the National institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, CO. He has worked on several different aspects of quantum computing, ranging from fast tunable circuits to multi qubit gate development and transmon qubit designs and coherence improvements. 

Brendan Shields, University of Basel

I grew up in Raleigh, NC, USA, where I got my start in physics in the Surface Science Lab of Robert Nemanich, then of NC State University. I moved to Boston, MA, USA, to go to school, eventually completing my PhD in experimental quantum optics in the group of Misha Lukin at Harvard University. Subsequently I moved to Basel, Switzerland, where I am currently a postdoc in the Quantum Sensing Lab of Patrick Maletinsky.

My research focuses on photonic engineering of single solid state spin systems, primarily the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond, for applications ranging from magnetic imaging to quantum information. Current projects include coupling of NV centers to diamond parabolic reflectors and Fabry-Perot microcavities.

Aziza Suleymanzade, University of Chicago

Aziza started in high energy physics at Harvard, where she got her Bachelor’s degree. Whileenjoying time at CERN and the collaborative spirit of particle physics, she decided to take a year off at Cambridge University and try Atomic Physics in the group of Zoran Hadzibabic. After completing her masters there and building the new system for creating Potassium 39 BEC in Uniform potential, she moved back to US to pursue her PhD at University of Chicago, determined to continue working in quantum matter. She is currently working on a collaborative project between Jonathan Simon and David Schuster involving combination of Rydberg atoms, cavity-QED and circuit QED systems. In particular, she is building a hybrid cavity-QED system for creating strong interactions between single optical and mm-wave photons using Rydberg atoms as the interface.

Rahul Trivedi is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at Stanford University under the supervision of Prof. Jelena Vuckovic and Prof. Shanhui Fan with a focus on theoretical quantum optics, nanophotonic simulation and design. He received his Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2019 with concentration in Physical Technology and Science, and his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi in 2016 with a concentration in Very Large-Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuit design. During the course of his undergraduate and graduate studies, he has co-authored 18 papers on topics in the fields of open quantum system theory, nanophotonic design, acceleration and implementation of electromagnetic simulation software. He has also been a visiting student at the theory division of Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), Germany under the supervision of Prof. Ignacio Cirac.

He has been awarded the Kailath Stanford Graduate fellowship to support his doctoral studies at Stanford and Stanford’s Electrical Engineering Teaching Fellowship for acting as the principal instructor for the graduate level course on Optical Micro- and Nanocavities. He has also been awarded the best undergraduate thesis award while at IIT Delhi. In 2012, he was awarded a gold medal at the 42ndInternational Physics Olympiad and at the 13th Asian Physics Olympiad.

Chiao-Hsuan Wang received her Bachelor and Master’s degree in Physics from National Taiwan University, where she studied quantum entanglement and emergent gravity with Pisin Chen. She completed her Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. While in UMD, she worked with Jacob M. Taylor on quantum optics, matter-light interactions, quantum simulation, and condensed matter theory. She joined Liang Jiang’s group at Yale as a postdoctoral associate in 2018 and relocated to University of Chicago in 2019. Her current interests include quantum transduction between microwave and optical modes, quantum information processing with superconducting circuits, and fault-tolerant bosonic quantum error correction. 

Wenchao Xu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Wenchao Xu is currently a postdoc associate working on a joint project led by Prof. Vladan Vuletic (MIT) and Prof. Misha Lukin (Harvard). Her research focuses on realizing strongly interacting photons with a quantum nonlinear medium, with its property controlled by a combination of electromagnetically induced transparency and Rydberg-Rydberg interactions. Wenchao completed her Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with Prof. Brian DeMarco. At UIUC, her research focused on the dynamics of ultracold fermions trapped in optical lattices, including the first observation of many-body localization in a three-dimensional optical lattice, the observation of abnormal transport, which is an analog to bad-metal behavior in high-temperature superconductors, and the realization of occupation-dependent tunneling between lattice sites.