In Episode 85, Patrick and Ciprian speak with returning guest Steven Girvin of Yale University. The team discusses error correction, Rydberg states, erasure errors, and dual rail encoding.

Dr. Steve Girvin
After graduating in a high school class of 5 students in the small village of Brant Lake, NY and completing his undergraduate degree in physics from Bates College, Dr. Girvin earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton University in 1977.

Dr. Girvin joined the Yale faculty in 2001, where he is Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Professor of Applied Physics. From 2007 to 2017 he served as Yale’s Deputy Provost for Research, overseeing strategic planning for research across Yale. From 2019 to 2021, he served as founding director of the Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage, one of five national quantum information science research centers funded by the Department of Energy.

Along with his experimenter colleagues Michel Devoret and Robert Schoelkopf, Professor Girvin co-developed ‘circuit QED,’ the leading architecture for construction of quantum computers based on superconducting microwave circuits.

Dr. Girvin is a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he and his collaborators, Allan H. MacDonald and James P. Eisenstein were awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society for their work on the fractional quantum Hall effect. In 2019, he and coauthor Kun Yang published the textbook “Modern Condensed Matter Physics” with Cambridge University Press.

In Episode 84, Patrick speaks with Ryan Lafler, President and CTO of Quantum Corridor. They discuss communications systems, Quantum key distribution, and high transmission networks.

Ryan Lafler co-founded Quantum Corridor, LLC, in early 2022 and serves as the President and Chief Technology Officer of the company. Ryan has more than 20 years of experience developing telecommunications solutions and has had considerable success constructing data and voice networks at scale. He previously co-founded Coeo Solutions, LLC, a managed service provider that has established fiber networks across 39 of 50 states in the U.S. He also founded FIT Telco, a telecommunications consulting firm supplying expertise in critical bandwidth for more than 30 international providers across the country. As President and CTO of Quantum Corridor, Ryan is responsible for day-to-day pathway and asset management, as well as the design, implementation and management of Quantum Corridor’s network. He possesses extensive experience and a comprehensive technical understanding of telecommunications and fiber networks, which will facilitate the advancement of capabilities and efficiencies in Quantum Corridor while providing innovative solutions with new technologies. Originally from Arizona, Ryan is a Tool fan, an auto fanatic and lives in the west suburbs of Chicago.

In Episode 83, Patrick and Ciprian speak with returning guest Dr. Prineha Narang of UCLA. The team discusses distributed quantum sensor networks, lasers, magnons, and new technology application opportunities through organic conversations.

Dr. Prineha Narang is a Professor in Physical Sciences and Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA with an interdisciplinary group spanning areas of physics, chemistry, and engineering. Prior to moving to UCLA, she was an Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Science at Harvard University. Before starting on the Harvard faculty in 2017, Dr. Narang was an Environmental Fellow at HUCE, and worked as a research scholar in condensed matter theory in the Department of Physics at MIT. She received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech.

Her group works on theoretical and computational quantum materials, non-equilibrium dynamics, and quantum information science. Narang’s work has been recognized by many awards and special designations, Narang’s work has been recognized by many awards and special designations, including the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship in Physics, Maria Goeppert Mayer Award from the American Physical Society, 2023 ONR Young Investigator Award, 2022 Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award from the Materials Research Society, Mildred Dresselhaus Prize, Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Max Planck Sabbatical Award from the Max Planck Society, and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics all in 2021, an NSF CAREER Award in 2020, being named a Moore Inventor Fellow by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, a Top Innovator by MIT Tech Review (MIT TR35, )and a leading young scientist by the World Economic Forum in 2018.

In 2017, she was named by Forbes Magazine on their “30under30” list for her work in atom-by-atom quantum engineering, that is, designing materials at the smallest scale, using single atoms, to enable the leap to quantum technologies. Dr. Narang has held leadership roles in a DOE EFRC ‘Photonics at Thermodynamic Limits’, DOE NQI Quantum Science Center, and the NSF ERC ‘Center for Quantum Networks’, among others. Her continued service to the science community includes chairing the Gordon Conference on Ultrafast and Cooperative Phenomena, Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring Meeting (2022) and the MRS-Kavli Foundation Future of Materials Workshop: Computational Materials Science (2021), organizing APS, Optica (OSA), and SPIE symposia, and a leadership role in APS’ Division of Materials Physics. Narang is an Associate Editor at ACS Nano of the American Chemical Society, an Associate Editor at Applied Physics Letters of the American Institute of Physics, and the Editorial Advisory Boards of Nano Letters and Advanced Photonics.

Dr. Narang is also the founder and Chief Technology Officer of Aliro, a VC-backed US quantum network company. At Aliro, she spearheads the effort in quantum information, towards commercializing scalable quantum networks.