Teachers & Speakers

Dr. Sterling Backus is well known as a pioneering developer of new ultrafast laser technologies. He has been with Thorlabs since Oct 2019, as well being as an Adjunct Professor in the ECE Department at Colorado State University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees, in Physics and a PhD in Engineering Science from Washington State University in 1996. His work in the development of high peak-and-average power ultrafast Ti:sapphire lasers, and the use of cryogenic cooling for ultrafast laser systems. Sterling is a Fellow of Optica, A Harold E. Edgerton award recipient, a U.S. Army veteran, and has served on program committees for numerous conferences in the field. He is also a #STEAM promoter in K-12 to seed the future of science, technology, engineering, art and math! 

Joshua C. Bienfang is a physicist in the Quantum Measurement Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and an affiliate of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. He received his doctoral degree in 2001 from the University of New Mexico in laser frequency stabilization and non-linear optics. In 2001 he built a 20 W sodium guidestar for adaptive optics based on continuous-wave sum-frequency generation. In 2004 his team demonstrated the first gigahertz-rate single-photon-based quantum key distribution system supporting one-time-pad encrypted streaming video. In 2013 his team demonstrated the first gigahertz-gated single-photon avalanche diode with detection efficiency above 50%. His group built an ultra-low-latency random number generator, and he was a co-champion of NIST’s loophole-free Bell test. His current research includes the development of single-photon detectors, detector metrology, quantum communications, and quantum networking.

Dr. Sonia Buckley is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado in the Sources and Detectors group of the Applied Physics Division. Her research interests are in metrology for future technologies and industries, with a current focus on developing standardized single photon detector efficiency measurements and a calibration service at NIST. She has over 40 publications in the areas of quantum optics, integrated photonics, and hardware for artificial intelligence. Sonia received a PhD in Applied Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2014, and her undergraduate degree in Physics from Trinity College Dublin in 2009.

Ivan A. Burenkov is an Assistant Research Scientist at Joint Quantum Institute. He received his Ph.D. degree from Lomonosov Moscow State University. He was a postdoctoral research fellow with Professor Sergey P. Kulik in the department of Quantum Electronics, where he built a laboratory for experimental cold atom physics and atomic optics. In 2015 Ivan joined the group of Professor Sergey V. Polyakov at NIST/JQI. Dr. Burenkov's current interests broadly cover quantum optics with research related to single-photon sources, detectors, quantum measurements, and quantum biophotonics. Specific efforts involve the implementation of the DCQ-net quantum network between NIST and UMD, a single-photon sensitive quantum flow cytometer that allows for faster, more accurate blood tests, a quantum microscope with applications in early-stage cancer detection, and photonic quantum information transduction and processing devices for quantum networking and computing.

Brad Coyle is the OEM camera product manager at Hamamatsu.  He has worked in the imaging field for over 16 years.   His lab experience is in cell biology and live cell microscopy.  For 8 years, he worked in advanced microscopy sales for Nikon Instruments.  He joined Hamamatsu 8 years ago in direct camera sales and quickly moved into OEM and automated imaging. His expertise includes camera and sensor technology, and advanced life science, physics, and Industrial applications. A new focus is quantum technology and new applications. Hamamatsu is a world leader focused on Light-powered innovation. Our mission is to benefit society through the development of technologies that capture, measure, and generate various types of light. 

Charlie Danaher is founder of Danaher Cryogenics (2022). Prior to founding Danaher Cryo, Charlie served as cryogenic engineer and operations Manager at Cryogenic Technical Services. He then spent 20 years at HPD in capacities of Mechanical Design Engineer, Engineering Manager, Vice President and Director of Business Development.  While at HPD Charlie lead a team developing the first commercially available ADR cryostat.  Over Charlie’s tenure he has partnered with many scientists around the world and locally with NIST Boulder, to advance the science forward by making cryostats evermore useful.

Ivo Pietro Degiovanni is Senior Researcher (“Primo Ricercatore”) at Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM). He has developed his scientific competences in the fields of Quantum Radiometry, Quantum Communication and Quantum-enhanced measurements as proved by his publications (194 papers, h-index 31 according to SCOPUS). He is the Chairman of the EURAMET European Metrology Network for Quantum Technologies (EMN-Q), and is a member of the INRIM Scientific Director Council. Degiovanni is also a member of the Strategic Research Agenda Working Group (SRA-WG) of the EU Quantum Flagship (team: “Sensing and Metrology”). He serves as Associate Editor of the European Physical Journal D (EPJ D) and of the European Physical Journal Quantum Technology (EPJ QT), as well as Lecturer of the course “Quantum Communication” at University of Torino (Torino Graduate School in Physics and Astrophysics). Degiovanni is also a member of the ETSI ISG-QKD (European Telecommunication Standard Institute – Industry Specification Group on Quantum Key Distribution).

Dr. Tasshi Dennis is the leader of the Quantum Networks project within the Communications Technology Laboratory of NIST, striving to demonstrate the world’s first optical network of remotely entangled, superconducting quantum computers. During his more than 20 year tenure at NIST, Tasshi has worked primarily in the research area of broadband optical communications. He has made contributions to the characterization of optical fibers, reference standards for wavelength division multiplexing, metrology for complex modulation formats, electro-optic sampling of electrical signals, and linear optical sampling of coherent optical signals. Tasshi is a senior member of the Optical Society of America, has served on the editorial board of Measurement Science and Technology, is an expert in quality management systems, and is adjoint Physics Department faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Klea Dhimitri is an Applications Engineer at Hamamatsu Corporation in Bridgewater, NJ. Her expertise includes photodetectors such as photomultiplier tubes (PMT), single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD), MPPC (which is Hamamatsu’s silicon photomultiplier), photodiodes and avalanche photodiodes (APD) and their role in quantum applications. Klea leads Hamamatsu's efforts and bringing R&D from Japan together with researchers and early adopters in North America to provide a range of photonics solutions from detectors, modulators, cameras for the current and future quantum technologies landscape. Managing Hamamatsu Corporation engagement and activities in North American quantum hubs like the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C). She received her bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics from CUNY Hunter College in 2018. 

Dr. Duncan Earl is the President and Chief Technology Officer at Qubitekk, Inc. Prior to co-founding Qubitekk, he spent eighteen years as an R&D scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he performed work in quantum optics, optical sensing, and various other optical research areas. Dr. Earl is a serial entrepreneur who has commercialized various technologies, holds numerous patents, and recently served as a Steering Committee member for the Quantum Economic Development Council (QED-C).

Dr. Angela Gamouras is a Research Officer in the Metrology Research Center at the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa, and a Fellow of the NRC-uOttawa Joint Center for Extreme Photonics. At NRC, Dr. Gamouras is responsible for Canada’s primary scale realizations of optical power and spectral irradiance, and has been developing efforts in few-photon metrology and Canadian quantum photonics standards. Dr. Gamouras holds a PhD in Physics from Dalhousie University where her thesis research focused on ultrafast quantum control of semiconductor quantum dots for quantum computing applications.

Thomas Gerrits is a Physicist in the Applied and Computational Mathematics Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He received his M.S. and PhD degree from the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In 2006 he joined the Faint Photonics and Quantum Nanophotonic groups at NIST and has pioneered the applications of high-efficiency superconducting single photon detectors for quantum optics and quantum information. He also worked on establishing a quantum standard for traceable optical radiometry. In 2020 he joined ITL’s Computing and Communications Theory Group at NIST, where he is developing widgets, methods and protocols for the characterization of future quantum networks and network components. His research interests include the generation of exotic quantum states of light, optical quantum metrology, development of measurement tools for quantum and classical optics, single photon imaging and quantum radiometry.

Matt Kirchner got his PhD in Physics from CU Boulder in 2011, working with Scott Diddams on frequency combs and pulse shaping.  From there, he moved to KMLabs designing and building ultrafast laser systems and nonlinear frequency conversion devices, finally moving to high energy ultrafast fiber lasers.  Matt took over the KMLabs laser engineering group in 2015 and became Director of Product Management and Laser Engineering in 2018.  Following the Thorlabs acquisition of part of KMLabs, Matt became the Site Manager of the Colorado branch of Thorlabs, directing the production, R&D, and operations for the Laser Division team.  Matt has grown the Laser Division team to about 20 people and his team has been nominated for multiple Thorlabs Excellence Awards.

John Lehman is a Senior Research Scientist in the Sources and Detectors Group and Senior Research Scientist in the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The Sources and Detectors Group provides laser power and energy calibration services to the US and other parts of the world – ranging from 0.2 attowatts to 100 kilowatts (in terms of photons, that’s about 1 photon/sec to 10²³ photons/sec at 1 µm). The Group’s research is related to new sources, detectors, and measurements to support US industry, quantum communications, manufacturing, and defense. John was awarded the Quantum Electronics and Photonics Ph.D. Prize from the Institute of Physics (IoP, UK). He is a Fellow of Optica and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany.

Adriana E. Lita is a NIST Staff Scientist with over 18 years of experience in fabrication and development of single-photon detectors such as transition-edge sensors (TES) and superconducting nanowires single-photon detectors (SNSPD) devices. Her work includes development of record high quantum efficiency TES devices optimized at various wavelengths from UV to near IR, integration of TES with optical waveguides platforms for photonic circuits, as well as materials development for SNSPDs. These single-photon detectors have been used in experiments at numerous laboratories around the world with applications ranging from testing fundamental laws of quantum mechanics to metrology of quantum light states and implementations of photonic quantum computing. Dr. Lita has published numerous scientific articles including a recent invited tutorial review paper on "Development of superconducting single-photon and photon-number resolving detectors for quantum applications” (A. E. Lita et al., Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2022, doi: 10.1109/JLT.2022.3195000.)

Michael D. Mazurek is a Research Associate at CU Boulder and NIST, with expertise building entangled photon pair sources for foundational tests of quantum theory and quantum light-matter interactions. Before joining NIST as a postdoc in 2018, Dr. Mazurek received his PhD in Physics from the University of Waterloo, where he developed a novel method for state and measurement tomography.

Adam McCaughan is a staff researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, CO.  His current research is on single-photon detector technologies, neuromorphic hardware analysis, and superconducting nanoelectronics.  He received his PhD from MIT under Prof. Karl Berggren, where he first studied superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and where he was awarded the Jin Au Kong Award for outstanding PhD thesis.  He started at NIST in 2016, joining the Faint Photonics group run by Sae Woo Nam. Recently he was named a Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellow by NASA for his work on superconducting-nanowire single-photon detector arrays.

Aaron J. Miller, co-founder and president of Quantum Opus, LLC, is an expert in low-temperature superconducting photon counters, device fabrication and processes, and cryogenic and room-temperature electronics. He has been working directly in the field of novel superconducting photon counters since 1997. He has personally designed the commercial instruments of Quantum Opus, including the cryogenic, mechanical, electrical, and electronic subsystems and currently oversees product innovations, development, and production. Dr. Miller also actively performs technical research and development, innovates new commercial products, and is a contributing member and leader in collaboration efforts with advisory technical consortia. He obtained his BA in Mathematics and Physics from Albion College in 1995, his PhD in Physics from Stanford University in 2001, was a postdoc and staff scientist at NIST (Boulder) from 2001-2005, professor of Physics at Albion College from 2005-2016, and has been full time at Quantum Opus since 2014.

Alan Migdall’s interests cover quantum optics with research related to single-photon sources, detectors, processors, and quantum memory for quantum information and computation applications. Efforts involve correlated two-photon light, nonlinear optics, parametric downconversion, multi-particle entanglement, randomness generation, and classical and quantum metrology. He implemented a single-photon-detector calibration and verification at one of the best levels of uncertainty yet achieved. Migdall leads the Quantum Optics Group of the Quantum Measurement Division at NIST. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, Optica, and the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. He has organized conferences and workshops on single-photon detector and source technologies and applications and metrology of that technology. He founded the Single Photon Workshop, which debuted at NIST in 2003 and has continued biannually at metrology and national labs around the world. He was editor of a book entitled Single Photon Generation and Detection (2013).

Dr. Richard Mirin is the Quantum Nanophotonics Group Leader in the Applied Physics Division of NIST. He has been working on single-photon sources and detectors and quantum optical measurements using these devices for almost 20 years. Recent results from his group include the demonstration of tightly focused surface acoustic waves coupled to epitaxial quantum dots for microwave-to-optical transduction and the demonstration of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors with 98% system detection efficiency at 1550 nm.

Dr. Sergey V. Polyakov is the project leader in Quantum Measurement division, Physical Measurement Laboratory at NIST. His projects aim at developing quantum methods of characterization of faint light with applications ranging from classical and quantum networking to quantum-enabled biophotonics. Sergey contributed to early research efforts in quantum repeaters. He developed innovative methods of single photon source characterization that leads to in-situ, non-invasive measurement of underlying physics of single-photon emitters. Recently, he invented and developed a new class of optical receivers for classical communications that use quantum measurement. He performed one of the most accurate single photon detector characterizations.  Sergey is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and has served as a General Chair of CLEO conference (2021), and Nonlinear Photonics topical meeting (2022). 

Dr. Dileep V. Reddy earned his Bachelors in Technology from the Electrical Engineering department at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM) in India. After continuing at IITM to earn a Masters in Communications and Signal Processing, he moved to Eugene, Oregon in 2010 to pursue graduate school in Quantum Optics under Prof. Michael Raymer. With PhD in hand, he got invited to apply to the CUBoulder physics PREP program for a postdoctoral position. Since he wanted experience with nanofabrication, he took the offer from the group that did pioneering work with superconducting photon detectors such as Transition-Edge Sensors (TES) and Superconducting Nanostrip Single-Photon Detectors (SNSPDs). Dileep currently holds the world record for the most efficient detection of near-IR wavelength photons with fiber coupled SNSPDs. Dileep likes to molt into a new research area every 5 years. In his spare time, he likes rock climbing, BJJ, reading, and tinkering with electronics.

Krister Shalm is an experimental quantum physicist working at the National Institute of Standards and Technologies since 2012. His research focuses on studying the quantum properties of light to develop new quantum networking technologies. He received his PHD in physics from the university of Toronto in 2010, and subsequently performed postdoctoral work at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Canada. Krister's work on entanglement has received widespread international recognition. When Krister isn't in the lab or sharing his love of science, he can be found swing dancing.

Kevin Silverman is an experimental physicist leading a semiconductor optics laboratory in the Quantum Nanophotonics Group at NIST Boulder. He began working at NIST while earning his Ph.D. in physics at University of Colorado Boulder. He is a recipient of the Dept. of Commerce gold medal and the NIST bronze medal.

Matt Spidell is a physicist in the Sources and Detectors Group of the Applied Physics Division at NIST, leading the Laser Power and Energy Meter Calibration Project. Responsibilities include performing or managing calibration services from single photons to 10 KW+ and ultraviolet to far infrared.  In addition, he performs research developing new detector technologies and engineering for improved implementations of secondary, transfer, and primary standards. He also serves as the division’s ISO17025:2017 Quality Manager with multiple roles as an assessor.  Prior to NIST, he served multiple roles in the US Air Force including physics instruction, management roles, and mechanical engineering for the C-5 Galaxy and C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft. Matt received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from USAFA, and his MS in Physics from AFIT. 

Dr. Michelle Stephens is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her focus is precision optical measurements. She is currently working within in the Sources and Detectors on the next generation of high-accuracy optical power measurement standards for laser power - including single photon calibrations- and for space-based measurements of the Earth Radiation Budget. She received her B.S. and PhD in Physics from MIT. Her graduate work was on laser interferometric detection of gravitational radiation. She was a postdoc at JILA and then spent two and a half years in the Time and Frequency Division at NIST, where her research was in frequency-stabilized lasers and laser cooling and trapping. In 1997 she was lured away to a start-up company. While the start-up company didn’t last, it started of an 18-year career in industry. She held positions as an R&D Engineer at Research Electro-Optics and an instrument systems engineer at Ball Aerospace and Technologies, Corp. At Ball, she contributed to several optical Earth remote sensing missions. She returned to NIST in 2015.

Martin J. Stevens is a NIST Staff Scientist with 17 years of experience working on single-photon sources, entangled-photon sources, and single-photon detectors. He has worked with collaborators around the world implementing these sources and detectors in a variety of experiments, ranging from studies of solid-state and molecular physics to fundamental tests of the quantum nature of light. Dr. Stevens was educated at the University of Minnesota (BS Physics, 1996) and the University of Iowa (Ph.D. Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2004). In 2004 he joined NIST as a postdoc. Since 2007 he has been a NIST Staff Scientist. He is the author of over 50 refereed journal articles and two book chapters.

Shuo Sun is an assistant professor of Physics and an associate fellow of JILA at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research lies in the areas of quantum optics, nanophotonics, and experimental quantum information science. Before joining the University of Colorado Boulder in Fall 2020, he worked at Stanford University as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a research scientist in the group of Prof. Jelena Vuckovic. He obtained his PhD in 2016 at the University of Maryland, College Park while working with Prof. Edo Waks.