Faculty Spotlight

Michael Bennett: Research Associate, JILA PFC Director Educational Outreach and Research • Informal Physics Education and PISEC Program

Mike Bennett joined JILA in 2016 and currently leads the JILA Physics Frontier Center (PFC)'s outreach initiative as the Director of Educational Outreach and Research as well as Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering (Q-SEnSE)'s Director of Education. Bennett is also the Director of the outreach program, where he oversees the implentation of PISEC's partnership-based informal STEM education initiatives, collaborating with both CU organizations and local K-12 educators to support PISEC's current efforts and to develop new opportunities for both volunteers and student participants. Bennett’s research focus is on physics education within an informal setting, such as after-school programs. His work is helping to contribute to understanding and improving informal physics educational programs.

Collaborating with undergraduate, graduate and professional researchers, Bennett leads the PISEC program to promote more effective learning in the field of physics education.

Research interests and current work

Bennett’s focus is on informal physics education, studying individual participants in PISEC as well as the program itself and supporting institutions. He is also an active member of CU Boulder’s Physics Education Research (PER) group. Bennett’s work helps push the forefront of studying the education of physics. According to Bennett: “There is a lot of work on what happens in the classroom and not a lot of work on the informal space. So, a lot of what we’re doing is mapping and adapting, in some sense, a lot of those thoughts and frameworks onto this environment.”

Education

Bennett received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Westmont College, California. He then earned his Ph.D. in experimental nuclear astrophysics from Michigan State University's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

Quotable and notable

Bennett has been an active member within the PER community for a long time. He has sat on the organizing committee board for the annual PER conference, and edited their conference proceedings. Additionally, he has been a convening member of the JILA Excellence in Diversity and Inclusivity (JEDI) committee, and has been an instrumental part of the committee since its inception.

“When I was in graduate school, I was supported by another Physics Frontier Center. So, JILA is the second PFC I’ve worked with. I’ve always been impressed by how central the broader impacts are to JILA’s culture. It’s something that is really baked in. So as the JILA Director of Education and Public Engagement, that makes my job a lot easier and more fun.”

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Faculty Spotlight

Penina Axelrad: University of Colorado Distinguished Professor, Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Education and experience

Axelrad earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then her PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 1991. As department chair, she worked collaboratively with multiple departments and institutes across campus on CU Boulder’s AeroSpace Ventures initiatives, and was instrumental in the creation of the new aerospace engineering building on east campus. Since joining the faculty, she has advised 22 PhD graduates, who have become key contributors and leaders in academia, government research labs, and the aerospace industry. Axelrad was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2019 for her work on analysis of multipath GPS signals to improve satellite navigation and new approaches to remote sensing.

Research interests

Axelrad’s research interests include space situational awareness, technology and algorithms for GPS-based position, navigation and timing (PNT) in space, airborne, marine and land environments, multipath characterization and correction, and remote sensing using GNSS-based reflectometry and radio occultation measurements. She has authored 62 journal papers, 197 conference papers, and served as PI or Co-I on research grants and contracts totaling $16 million. Axelrad was recently awarded a grant from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory related to position, navigation and timing challenges in small spacecraft. She currently leads a Department of Education GAANN (Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need) program focused on growing the number of PhD graduates with expertise in critical aerospace technologies, and seeking to increase the representation of women and students from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the aerospace field.

Axelrad is also a senior investigator on the new  center, where she is studying applications of quantum technologies and systems for exploration, positioning, navigation and timing.

Thought leadership

Axelrad is an active member of the Institute of Navigation (ION), having served in numerous positions including president of the institute and associate editor of the ION journal, Navigation. She is a fellow of the ION and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Additional honors include the Lawrence Sperry Award (1996) from the AIAA, Samuel Burka Award (2011) and Johannes Kepler Award (2009) from the ION, Women In Aerospace Educator Award (2015), and University of Colorado Excellence in Leadership Award (2017).

Quotable and notable

Axelrad said she was proud of the college’s long history and current role in producing top-tier engineers who can immediately contribute professionally—no matter their chosen field after graduation.

“Engineering is a great profession. It brings together science and math and computing, with creativity and problem-solving and innovative design. And, it provides so many different pathways to be successful and to make a real difference in your own unique way.”

  Penina Axelrad Group

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Faculty Spotlight

Sean Shaheen: Professor, Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering

Education and experience

Shaheen earned his bachelor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from the University of Arizona—both in physics. He currently serves as a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering with a joint appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is a fellow in the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute and previously served as the interim director of the Multi-Functional Materials Interdisciplinary Research Theme. Shaheen is also the director of the university's Authentic Research Experiences for Teachers (ARETe) Program, which matches faculty from Colorado two-year colleges with research laboratories in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Boulder for in-depth, collaborative research experiences.

Research interests

The Shaheen Group aims to find insightful solutions to complex and compelling scientific questions and to engineer better materials, devices, and systems for future technologies that can benefit humankind. Members of the group carry out work in advancing solar energy harvesting, developing new optoelectronic materials and devices, and studying complex processes in biological systems. They are particularly interested in quantum materials with unique charge transport and photonic properties for applications in photovoltaics, memory devices, and neuromorphic circuits. Shaheen is currently with Markus Raschke in the Department of Physics and JILA through a seed grant from the CUbit Quantum Initiative. It is titled: “Room Temperature Coherence and Condensation in Exciton-Polariton States: Toward Practical Quantum Phenomena in Cavity-Coupled Perovskite Materials.”

Thought leadership

Shaheen become the new editor-in-chief of the Journal of Photonics for Energy (JPE) in July, 2020. He succeeds the journal's founding editor-in-chief, Zakya Kafafi, who had served since 2011. He said JPE has become a valuable platform for the dissemination of knowledge generated in laboratories around the world working on new photovoltaic and related energy-harvesting devices and that he looks forward to leading its future efforts in publishing emerging science and technology concepts.

Quotable and notable

“Multi-functional materials represent a new paradigm for engineering future materials systems that seamlessly integrate sensing, cognition, and actuation. Akin to biological materials and living systems, they utilize their various capabilities on-demand for high performance and robustness in the face of changing performance needs and environmental stresses,” said Shaheen.

  The Shaheen Group

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Faculty Spotlight

Heather Lewandowski: Professor, Department of Physics; JILA Fellow

Research interests

Lewandowski’s group studies collisions and reactions of simple cold molecules, with the ultimate goal to understand the quantum mechanical processes involved in making and breaking a chemical bond. Her group aims to control the reacting molecules external and internal degrees of freedom in the quantum regime. To accomplish this control, the team slows down a supersonically cooled molecular beam using time-varying inhomogeneous electric fields (Stark deceleration). The cold (~100 mK) molecules are then loaded into an electrostatic trap to allow for interactions to be studied for several seconds.

Education and experience

Lewandowski received her BS in physics from Michigan Technological University in 1997 and a PhD in physics from the University of Colorado in 2002, working in the group of Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell. She started as an assistant professor at CU Boulder in 2005. In addition to her other academic affiliations at CU Boulder, she is an associate chair of physics and the director of the Engineering Physics program.

In 2011, she expanded her research portfolio to include Physics Education Research. Her PER work focuses on student learning in laboratory courses, particularly at the upper-division level.

Quotable and notable

Lewandowski was named a 2020 Career Mentoring Fellow by the American Physical Society (APS) and won the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service from the American Association of Physics Teachers in 2019. She also won the APS’s Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction in 2019.

She was named an APS fellow in 2018 and won a Traditional Fulbright Scholarship that year. Additionally, she won a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award from the National Science Foundation in 2008. She won a Sloan Research Fellowship in physics from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2007.

In an article published in the journal Physical Review Physics Education Research this fall, Lewandowski and two colleagues explored higher education role in preparing the quantum-revolution workforce.

Drawing from 21 interviews with U.S. companies, she and her fellow researchers suggest that students graduating with a bachelor’s in physics or engineering can be insufficiently prepared to work in the quantum field. Physics majors generally have little experience building electrical or quantum devices, while engineering majors often have little exposure to quantum mechanics, Lewandowski told Physics, which profiled the work.

“Improving our undergraduate instruction is really important,” she told the publication. “We need more authentic laboratory experiences and refocused introductory quantum-information courses that have no physics prerequisites.”

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Faculty Spotlight

Shuo Sun: Assistant Professor of Physics, JILA Associate Fellow

Research interests

Shuo Sun’s research studies light-matter interactions at the quantum limit where single photons can interact with single atoms. The strong atom-photon interactions lead to two important applications in quantum information science and technology. First, they allow a single atom to mediate nonlinear interactions between optical photons or to generate entangled-photon clusters, which are critical capabilities for optical quantum information processing. Second, they allow optical photons to mediate interactions and entanglement between remote atoms to form quantum networks and distributed quantum computers.

The Sun group at JILA studies both applications with different atom-photon interaction platforms. Remarkably, they employ solid-state artificial atoms made of nanocrystals or atomic defects and impurities instead of trapped atoms. These artificial atoms are naturally embedded inside a semiconductor crystal, in which one can make electromagnetic, mechanic, and optical devices to tailor and control the electronic wavefunctions as well as to couple them with quantum circuits. 

Education

Sun received a Bachelor of Optics at Zhejiang University in China. He completed a Master and Ph.D. of Electrical Engineering at University of Maryland, College Park. After completing his degrees, he was a postdoctoral researcher and a physical science research scientist at Stanford University, working with Professor Jelena Vuckovic. In August 2020 he joined JILA as an assistant professor of physics and JILA Associate Fellow.

Quotable and notable

Since driving from Maryland to Stanford, Sun has enjoyed driving and road trips. He also enjoys hiking and skiing, and is a premier league soccer fan. 

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Faculty Spotlight

Sae Woo Nam: Project Leader, Faint Photonics Group, NIST 

Research interests

Sae Woo Nam is currently a project leader for the Faint Photonics group at NIST. A photon is the smallest unit of light. Manipulating and understanding single photons is key to enhancing and developing new optical systems—particularly for precision measurement, quantum computing, long-distance communications and remote sensing. 

Nam’s research focuses on developing single photon technologies for quantum information science and technology. The group has built world-renowned detector systems that operate at the single photon level, including a device that can count about 20,000 photons per second. His work has also produced record-holding demonstrations of quantum key distribution (QKD) for ultra-secure communications.

Currently, the Faint Photonics Group is primarily focused on using two different superconducting detector technologies—transition-edge sensors (TES) and superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPD).

Education

Nam received a Bachelor of Physics and a Master of Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991, as well as a PhD from Stanford University in 1998. Following his degree, he was awarded an NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at NIST to continue work on advanced applications of superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) based detectors. 

Quotable and notable

Nam has received numerous awards for his achievements. He was awarded the Department of Commerce’s Gold Medal in 2011, the highest honor from the Secretary of Commerce. In 2008, Nam was honored with the Jacob Rabinow Applied Research Award for his record-breaking photon detector, and in 2008 he received the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Applied Science, Engineering and Mathematics. 

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Faculty Spotlight

Wounjhang (Won) Park: Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering

Education and experience

Park earned his PhD in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, writing his thesis on the optical properties of thin film phosphors. He joined the University of Colorado Boulder in 2001 in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, becoming a full professor in 2015. He is also a fellow in the Materials Science and Engineering Program and has been a member of the University of Colorado Cancer Center since 2008.

Research interests

Park’s group studies light-matter interaction in nanoscale materials and structures and develops photonic devices based on them. Examples are plasmonic nanostructures, photonic crystals, metamaterials and metasurfaces, high-Q resonators, and luminescent materials. They also conduct extensive theoretical modeling studies, synthesis and fabrication of nanostructures and spectroscopy and microscopy to demonstrate novel optical phenomena. Targeted applications include nonlinear and quantum optical devices, energy harvesting devices, biomedical imaging and nano-medicine approach for cancer treatment. Park is currently working with Ralph Jimenez, an adjoint associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences on a CUbit seed grant exploring photon and nanomaterials engineering for quantum-enhanced biosensing. 

Interdisciplinary work

Park said his lab collaborates with chemists, chemical engineers, physicists and medical professionals on many different projects. One that showcases this interdisciplinary work uses plasmonic nanostructures to diagnose and treat cancer. If successful, the technique they are developing could simultaneously image and kill cancer cells. Their work and testing focus on bladder cancer, the fourth most common non-skin cancer among men in the U.S. The team uses a gold nanorod bonded with an antibody that targets bladder cancer cells. When inserted into the bladder, it selectively binds to cancer cells which can then be destroyed upon irradiation by laser induced heating. Park and his collaborators have patents around this technique, which was recently described in Materials Science and Engineering: C.

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Faculty Spotlight

Leo Radizhovsky: Professor, Department of Physics

Research interests

Leo Radizhovsky develops theories of a broad range of condensed matter, which includes quantum liquids, superconductors, magnets, polymers, liquid crystals, colloids, disordered systems, degenerate atomic gases, quantum molecular chemistry and critical phenomena. The common theme that unifies these topics is the qualitatively important role played by thermal and quantum fluctuations and interactions.

Education and experience

Radizhovsky joined the University of Colorado Boulder faculty in 1995 as an assistant professor of physics. He has served as a visiting professor at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in California, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in France. He earned his PhD in physics from Harvard University in 1993 and served as a postdoctoral researcher at the James Franck Institute in Chicago. 

Quotable and notable

Radzihovsky, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, has been named a Simons Investigator and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He has won a fellowship for science and engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a Sloan Research Fellowship in physics from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and an award from Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program from the National Science Foundation.

One of Radzihovsky’s peer-reviewed papers was turned into a song by YouTuber Jonathan Mann, who writes a song a day. The song is titled “.”

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Faculty Spotlight

Cindy Regal: Associate Professor, Department of Physics; JILA Fellow

Research interests

Regal’s main research interest is engineering and exploring isolated quantum systems for quantum information and quantum optics. In particular, she focuses on manipulating single and few neutral atoms and the quest to control single phonons in mesoscopic mechanical oscillators. This experimental work relies upon low-loss optical interfaces and laser cooling and trapping techniques.

Education and experience

Regal joined the University of Colorado Boulder faculty in 2010 as an assistant professor of physics and associate fellow of JILA. She earned her PhD in physics from CU Boulder in 2006 and then served as a postdoctoral researcher at JILA until 2007. Before returning to CU Boulder, she served as a Millikan Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 2007 to 2010. 

Quotable and notable

Regal was named a 2018 Alexander M. Cruickshank Lecturer by the Gordon Research Conferences, a prestigious title is given worldwide to scientists at the top of their fields in the physical, chemical and biological sciences. She was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2017 and won the CO-Labs Colorado Governor’s Award for high-impact Research in 2016. 

In research published last year in Physical Review X, a team of scientists led by Regal reported that they trapped single, neutral rubidium atoms with a 90 percent probability, using tiny laser beams, also called “optical tweezers.”

Lone atoms are a potential building block for harnessing quantum physics. Explaining the challenge, Regal said, “Bits in a quantum computer will necessarily be tiny things. And every tiny thing presents its own challenges for wrangling.”

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Faculty Spotlight

Alexandra Kolla: Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, UC Santa Cruz

Research interests

Kolla’s research interests include spectral graph theory, algorithms, complexity, convex programming, statistical physics and quantum computing. Kolla is particularly interested in the use of spectral methods in graph algorithms and more so in developing new spectral techniques that use the full power of graph spectra. She believes such techniques will help shed light into various unanswered complexity questions, like the Unique Games Conjecture.  

Education and experience

Kolla was at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2018-2022. She earned her PhD in 2009 from the University of California, Berkeley before going on to serve as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study, Microsoft Research’s Theory Group. She later joined the faculty of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor, serving for 4 years. During part of that time, she was also a fellow at the Simons Institute for Computing in Berkeley.

Quotable and notable

Kolla enjoys talking with others about her research into spectral graph theory. She said “it is a way to, instead of looking at a graph and working with it, listen to the graph like an instrument: a subtle linear algebra way to understand the graph with mathematics.”

Kolla worked with Assistant Professor Graeme Smith in Physics and JILA to write and define the Quantum Computing and Simulation Pillar of the CUbit Quantum Initiative.

“We established a lot of long-term goals for the initiative in that field,” said Kolla. “We are also talking to people in the practical fields to find challenges that we could theoretically solve with quantum computing. That gives a proof of concept which can also be valuable.”

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