People News

Timothy Qian, a senior at Montgomery Blair High School, has been named a finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS) 2021 competition for the research from his summer research internship at the University of Maryland. He performed the work with the mentorship of JQI Fellow Alexey Gorshkov, who is also a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, and Jacob Bringewatt, a graduate student in physics at UMD. He developed a procedure for using networks of quantum sensors to perform optimal measurements of things like the electric field generated at a particular point by a distribution of electrons or the magnetic field produced by atomic nuclei. 

JQI Fellow Jake Taylor has been recognized by the federal government for his role in expanding U.S. policy and efforts in the fiercely competitive field of quantum information science. Taylor, who is also a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is the recipient of the 2020 Gold Medal Award from the Department of Commerce.

JQI Fellow Alicia Kollár has been awarded a grant by the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program (YIP). She is one of 36 early-career researchers around the US to receive the three-year, $450,000 award.

Two JQI Fellows are included on the Clarivate Web of Science Group’s 2020 list of Highly Cited Researchers, which recognizes influential scientists for their highly cited papers over the preceding decade. The two researchers are Sankar Das Sarma, the Director of the Condensed Matter Theory Center and the Richard E. Prange Chair and Distinguished University Professor of Physics at the University of Marlyand (UMD), and Christopher Monroe, Distinguished University Professor and the Bice Zorn Professor of Physics at UMD and a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Physical Review B, editors selected “milestone” papers that have made lasting contributions to condensed matter physics, including one co-written by JQI Fellow Sankar Das Sarma. Das Sarma wrote the selected paper, Dielectric function, screening, and plasmons in two-dimensional graphene, with Euyheon Hwang.

A paper coauthored by JQI Fellow Ian Spielman in 2011 has been highlighted by the journal Physical Review A as part of its 50th anniversary celebration—one of only 26 that the journal plans to highlight in its “anniversary milestones” collection. The collection comprises papers published in the journal “that have made important contributions to atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum information by announcing significant discoveries or by initiating new areas of research.” Highlighting these notable papers is part of the American Physical Society’s celebration of the splitting of the journal Physical Review into four journals, Physical Review A-D, that each cover different specialized physics content.

JQI Fellow Christopher Monroe has been elected as a Fellow of The Optical Society (OSA). He is one of 118 OSA members to be selected this year.

This historical note was written by JQI Fellow Luis Orozco.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $1 million to a multi-institutional team led by JQI Fellow Edo Waks, who is also a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD) and associate director of the Quantum Technology Center (QTC); JQI Fellow Norbert Linke, who is also an assistant professor of physics at UMD and a QTC Fellow; Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) Executive Director Tripti Sinha; and co-PI’s Dirk Englund of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Saikat Guha of the University of Arizona, to help develop quantum interconnects for ion trap quantum computers, which are currently some of the most scalable quantum computers available.

JQI Fellow Alexey Gorshkov has been elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). He is one of 163 APS members to join the select group this year.