Victor Acosta

Guest Editor for this issue of MRS Bulletin

HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA; tel. 650-857-3210; and email Victor.acosta@hp.com.

Acosta is a postdoc at HP Labs, where he works on coupling NV centers to optical microcavities to form integrated photonic circuits for quantum computing and sensing. Acosta earned a PhD degree in physics from UC-Berkeley in Dmitry Budker’s group. His research focused on the basic physics underlying alkali vapor-cell and NV-based magnetometry. He built the first generation of micron-scale diamond magnetometers, with an eye toward magnetic resonance imaging of small numbers of spins and mapping of highly localized fields.

Philip Hemmer

Guest Editor for this issue of MRS Bulletin

Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA; tel. 979-845-8932; and email prhemmer@ece.tamu.edu.

Hemmer received his BS degree in physics from the University of Dayton and his PhD degree in physics from MIT. He worked for many years as a physicist for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Hanscom AFB, Mass. Since 2002, he has been a professor in the ECE Department at Texas A&M University. Hemmer’s current research interests include quantum optics, especially with nitrogen-vacancy diamond, subwavelength imaging, quantum computing in solids, plasmon-based nano-optics, slow and stopped light, and ultrasound imaging.

David D. Awschalom

Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; email awsch@physics.ucsb.edu.

Awschalom is the Peter J. Clarke Director of the California NanoSystems Institute and a Professor of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His group has research activities in optical and magnetic interactions in semiconductor quantum structures, spin dynamics and coherence in condensed matter systems, and implementations of quantum information processing in the solid state. He received an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award, the MRS Outstanding Investigator Prize and David Turnbull Award, the IUPAP International Magnetism Prize and Néel Medal, the APS Oliver E. Buckley Prize, the EPS Europhysics Prize, and the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize. Awschalom is a Fellow of the APS and AAAS and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering.

Lee C. Bassett

Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; email lbassett@physics.ucsb.edu.

Bassett is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a BS degree in physics from The Pennsylvania State University and completed the MASt program in mathematics and a PhD degree in physics at the University of Cambridge before moving to UC Santa Barbara in 2009. Some of Bassett’s recent work involves using electric fields and light to coherently control single spins in diamond.

Bob B. Buckley

Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; email buckley@physics.ucsb.edu.

Buckley is currently a physics graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, advised under Professor David Awschalom. He received his BS degree in mechanical engineering and engineering physics from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, performing undergraduate research under Professor Roger D. Kirby. His research interests include coherent optical and spin interactions exhibited by optically addressable defect spins in solids.

Greg Calusine

Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; email calusine@physics.ucsb.edu.

Calusine is a graduate student in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, advised by Professor David Awschalom. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 with a degree in physics and a minor in mathematics. His current research focuses on searching for new defect qubit candidates in materials that are well suited for traditional semiconductor device fabrication.

Lilian Childress

McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; email childres@physics.mcgill.ca.

Childress is an assistant professor at McGill University in Canada. She performed her doctoral work on NV centers in the group of Professor Mikhail Lukin at Harvard University. In 2007, she joined the faculty at Bates College, where she continued to study nuclear spins in diamond. She spent much of 2011 as a visiting researcher in Professor Ronald Hanson’s group before joining Professor Jack Harris’ group at Yale University as a postdoctoral associate.

Andrei Faraon

California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA; email faraon@caltech.edu.

Faraon is an assistant professor of applied physics and materials science at the California Institute of Technology. He holds a BS degree in physics from Caltech (2004), an MS degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University (2009), and a PhD degree in applied physics also from Stanford (2009). Faraon’s interests focus on developing new photonic technologies based on the fundamentals of light matter interaction at the quantum level. He has published over 25 journal articles and co-authored three book chapters.

Michael S. Grinolds

Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; tel. 617-495-8599; and email grinolds@fas.harvard.edu.

Grinolds is a PhD student studying physics at Harvard University, working with Professor Amir Yacoby on spin-based magnetometry and quantum information processing in diamond. Specifically, he and his co-workers have been developing a scanning magnetometer using a single NV center in diamond. He earned his BS degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2008.

Bernhard Grotz

3rd Institute of Physics in Stuttgart, Germany; email b.grotz@physik.uni-stuttgart.de.

Grotz is currently a PhD student at the 3rd Institute of Physics in Stuttgart in Germany where he received his master’s degree in 2007. His current research areas are quantum optics in the solid state and plasmonics.

Liam T. Hall

School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Australia; email lthall@physics.unimelb.edu.au.com.

Hall is a PhD student in the School of Physics, at the University of Melbourne. His research has focused on the investigation of open quantum systems and decoherence at mesoscopic scales and ambient conditions. His current research interests include spin resonance, many-body dynamics of spin-based systems, and carbon physics, with a particular focus on applications to biological sensing and quantum computing.

Ronald Hanson

Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; tel. +31 15 278 7188; and email r.hanson@tudelft.nl.

Hanson is the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology. His research focuses on quantum science and quantum information processing in the solid state. His doctoral work was on quantum dots with Leo Kouwenhoven (Delft), and he was a postdoc with David Awschalom (UCSB) on diamond NV centers before starting his own group in 2007. Hanson received the QIPC European Young Investigator Award in 2011 and the Oxford Instruments Nicholas Kurti Prize in 2012.

Lloyd C.L. Hollenberg

School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Australia; email lloydch@unimelb.edu.au.

Hollenberg is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology. He completed his PhD degree in theoretical particle physics at the University of Melbourne in 1989, after which he was awarded a JSPS Fellowship at the KEK accelerator laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. After his postdoctoral work, he returned to the University of Melbourne where he is now a professor in the School of Physics. He is a proponent of quantum technology, with broad interests including quantum computers, quantum communication, and the development of quantum sensing techniques crossing over to the nano-bio realm.

Sungkun Hong

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; email shong@seas.harvard.edu.

Hong is a senior PhD student in applied physics at Harvard University, working on spin-based magnetometry and quantum information in diamond with Professor Amir Yacoby. Hong and his co-workers have been developing a scanning magnetometer using a single NV center in diamond. He earned his BS degree in mechanical engineering from Seoul National University in South Korea.

Fedor Jelezko

Institute of Quantum Optics at Ulm University, Germany; email fedor.jelezko@uni-ulm.de.

Jelezko is a professor for experimental physics and director of the Institute of Quantum Optics at Ulm University. He received his diploma in 1994 and PhD degree in 1998 from Minsk University. He joined Ulm University in 2010, where he established a new institute working at the interface between solid-state physics and quantum optics. He received the Walter Schottky Prize of DPG in 2008.

Marko Lončar

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University; Cambridge, MA; tel. 617-495-5798; and email loncar@seas.harvard.edu.

Lončar is the Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He received his Diploma (1997) from the University of Belgrade (Republic of Serbia) and his MS (1998) and PhD (2003) degrees from the California Institute of Technology, all in electrical engineering. His recent research interests include optical nanocavities, diamond nanophotonics and quantum optics, nanoscale optomechanics, and cavity-based biochemical sensing. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2009 and the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 2010.

Lan Luan

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; tel. 617-495-8599; and email lluan@physics.harvard.edu.

Luan is a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Yacoby at Harvard University, working on spin-based quantum information and magnetometry in diamond and silicon. She earned her BS degree at the University of Science and Technology in China, and her PhD degree in physics from Stanford University in 2011, where she worked with Professor K.A. Moler on developing low temperature magnetic scanning probes to study unconventional superconductors.

Liam McGuinness

Institute of Quantum Optics at Ulm University, Germany; email liam.mcguinness@uni-ulm.de.

McGuinness is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Institute of Quantum Optics at Ulm University, where he has been since 2011. He completed a Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Monash University in 2002, before receiving BS and PhD degrees from the University of Melbourne. His current research areas are quantum optics in solid state and biophysics.

Linh M. Pham

School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; email mylinh@seas.harvard.edu.

Pham is an applied physics PhD candidate working with Ronald Walsworth at Harvard University. Her research pursuits include demonstrating NV magnetic field imaging using a CCD-based wide-field microscope, developing techniques for improving NV magnetic field sensitivity, and studying NV spin physics. Pham earned dual BS degrees in physics and computer engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

David Le Sage

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA; tel. 617-495-7218; and email dlesage@cfa.harvard.edu.

Le Sage is a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) working with Ronald Walsworth. His postdoctoral research has included developing a wide-field magnetic imaging microscope using ensembles of NV centers in diamond, developing techniques for improved NV-diamond magnetometer sensitivity, and pursuing applications of this technology. He earned a BA degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD degree in physics from Harvard University, where he conducted antihydrogen formation research with Professor Gerald Gabrielse.

David A. Simpson

School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Australia; email simd@unimelb.edu.au.

Simpson is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of Melbourne. He obtained his PhD degree in experimental physics from Victoria University in 2008. His research interests include quantum measurement, the material properties of diamond, and optical techniques to address quantum systems. His research is currently focused on wide-field imaging and detection of single spins in biological systems.

David M. Toyli

Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; email toyli@physics.ucsb.edu.

Toyli is currently a PhD candidate in physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his BS degree in physics from the University of Minnesota, performing undergraduate research in the laboratory of Professor Paul Crowell. His research interests include ion implantation techniques for the generation of single spins in semiconductors and temperature measurement with single spins in diamond.

Ronald L. Walsworth

Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; tel. 617-495-7274; and email rwalsworth@cfa.harvard.edu.

Walsworth is a senior physicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and a senior lecturer on physics at Harvard University. He leads an interdisciplinary research group with a focus on developing precision measurement tools and applying them to both the physical and life sciences. Walsworth received the 2005 Francis Pipkin Award from the American Physical Society (APS) for his work on precision measurements, and has been an APS Distinguished Traveling Lecturer since 2002.

Jörg Wrachtrup

Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart, Germany; email j.wrachtrup@physik.uni-stuttgart.de.

Wrachtrup is a professor of experimental physics at Stuttgart University, and director of the 3rd Institute of Physics and Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart. He received his diploma in 1990 and PhD degree in 1994 from the Free University in Berlin. Wrachtrup leads a research group of 70 people comprised of assistant professors, postdoctoral members, and PhD students. In addition, as a Max Planck Fellow, he is heading a research activity affiliated at the MPI for solid-state research. He has received the European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant, the Stepanov Award of the Belorussian Academy of Science, and the Leibniz Prize of the German Physical Society.

Amir Yacoby

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA; tel. 617-495-1180; and email yacoby@phsics.harvard.edu.

Yacoby holds a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering and a master’s degree in theoretical physics. His PhD degree in experimental condensed matter physics focused on understanding coherence in mesoscopic systems. Yacoby’s interests are in understanding the behavior of low-dimensional systems and their applications to quantum information technology. His current research topics include spin-based quantum computing and metrology using semiconducting quantum dots, color centers in diamond, and phosphorous spins in silicon; topological quantum computing using HgCdTe quantum wells; and interacting electrons in graphene multilayers.