New Faculty: David Schuster and Jon Simon
Meet David Schuster
David received his bachelor's degree in mathematics-physics in 2001 at Brown University, and his PhD in physics in 2007 from the Yale University. He was awarded the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools Dissertation Award. David performed postdoctoral research at Yale and MIT on studying hybrid quantum systems, before joining the faculty of the physics department at the University of Chicago in late 2010.
For his work as a faculty member he has received several honors including the William L. McMillan Prize, the Packard Fellowship, NSF CAREER award, and Darpa Young Faculty Award. He joins the Applied Physics department at Stanford University in the fall of 2022 (but will arrive on campus in January 2023). Professor Schuster’s research focuses broadly on experimental realizations of quantum computation, sensing, and communications. He has pioneered many approaches employing superconducting circuits including circuit quantum electrodynamics and the transmon qubit, which are the basis of many academic and industrial efforts to realize quantum computing. Like classical computers today, quantum computers will employ a wide variety of physical phenomena for different tasks and Professor Schuster’s group collaborates to study hybrid quantum systems with trapped atoms, electrons on helium, and other quantum systems. In addition to studying aspects of digital quantum computers, his group also explores methods of directly constructing many-body quantum systems of interest from strongly interacting superconducting circuits.
David states, "I'm most excited by the broad array of faculty and students I will have the opportunity to interact with. I'm excited both to collaborate with folks already active in quantum sciences research as well as groups from across the engineering school and at SLAC exploring a wide variety of topics."
Research areas: Quantum Computing and Communication Devices, Quantum Sensing, Metrology, Imaging, Quantum Simulation,
Get to know Jon Simon
Jon grew up fascinated with electronics, programming, simulating the world, and soccer. He went to Montgomery Blair high school, where he was captain of the game programming club and the chess team. As an undergraduate at Caltech, he led the Beavers to a 1-63 record (seriously - they were terrible) over his 3 seasons on the NCAA DIII soccer team, all while learning physics and building electronics.
As a graduate student and postdoc at MIT & Harvard, Jon focused primarily on cavity QED and synthetic quantum matter in optical lattices, while achieving the distinction of coming in dead last in the Head of the Charles Regatta Club 8's. On weekends he kitesurfed on the Cape.
Jon joins the Stanford community after 10 years as faculty at UChicago, and his group’s interests in light, quantum physics, and circuits have combined in the study of quantum & classical matter made of light. In his spare time Jon grapples, flies drones, and trains his cat, Emmy, to perform tricks.
Jon most looks forward to the breadth of the quantum science community at Stanford – with amazing scientists across numerous departments who he is eager to bounce ideas off of.
Look for Jon around campus starting Spring Quarter, 2022.
Quantum Research Areas: Quantum Computing and Communication Devices, Quantum Simulation