Dr Raffi Budakian, an internationally renowned physicist, was awarded the University of Waterloo Endowed Chair in Nanotechnology in Superconductivity in Waterloo's Department of Physics and Astronomy in July 2014.
His research focuses on the development of experimental tools for ultra sensitive detection of electron and nuclear spins for applications in research programs ranging from biology to quantum information.
Dr Budakian earned his Bachelor's, Master's and PhD degrees in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles. From 2002 to 2005, he was a visiting scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. He then joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until his appointment at the University of Waterloo. In 2005, he won a World Technology Award for his work on the detection and manipulation of quantum spins.