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.
Sae Woo Nam