McKendry co-directs Q-BIOMED, the UK's national quantum-biomedical-sensing research hub (UKRI/NIHR, ~GBP24M), which brings NV-diamond and other quantum sensors into clinical diagnostics. Her own group has developed nitrogen-vacancy nanodiamond-labelled lateral-flow and rapid molecular tests -- including a quantum-enhanced SARS-CoV-2 antigen test and single-molecule HIV RNA detection -- that exploit resonant microwave control of the NV spin state to separate signal from background and push rapid point-of-care diagnostics toward single-molecule sensitivity, a direct human-diagnostics application of quantum sensing.
McKinsey develops ultra-low-background noble-liquid (xenon and argon) time-projection chambers for direct dark matter detection, including leadership roles on LZ, and works on quantum-sensor readout of scintillation and ionization signals to push detection thresholds toward single-quantum sensitivity.
Merkt leads the Molecular Physics and Spectroscopy group at ETH D-CHAB. Research directions: (1) High-resolution XUV/VUV spectroscopy β using synchrotron radiation and table-top laser sources to study molecular Rydberg states, ionization thresholds, and ro-vibrational structure at sub-MHz precision; (2) Precision molecular clock transitions β proposing and measuring molecular transitions suitable for fundamental constant variation searches (ΞΌ, Ξ±); (3) Metastable atom and ion trapping β developing new trapping methods for precision spectroscopy of exotic species; (4) Pulse and Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy β rotational spectroscopy of transient species. Direct applications to molecular quantum sensing and fundamental physics.
Miller develops nitrogen-vacancy nanodiamond quantum biosensors for rapid diagnostics, controlling the NV spin state with resonant green/microwave illumination to frequency-separate fluorescence signal from background and achieve single-molecule detection of nucleic acids (e.g. HIV RNA with a short isothermal amplification step) in lateral-flow and widefield formats. His current projects span nanodiamond sensors for point-of-care disease diagnostics, quantum sensing at neural-interface implants, and wide-field quantum sensing of large randomly-oriented nanodiamond ensembles in biological samples, actively recruiting PhD students through the Q-BIOMED hub.
Best known as a collider (ATLAS) physicist, Miller also leads the BREAD collaboration's broadband dish-antenna search for axion dark matter, converting axions to photons inside a solenoid magnet and reading them out with a THz receiver and Fourier-transform spectrometer to cover mass ranges inaccessible to narrowband cavity haloscopes. This is a fundamentally different quantum-sensing strategy than solid-state NV-ensemble magnetometers/thermometers, which reach pT/sqrt(Hz)-class sensitivity via DEER, NMR, and T1-relaxometry protocols on spin ensembles; Miller's approach instead pushes broadband photon-counting sensitivity for fundamental-physics searches. Actively recruiting postdocs for BREAD instrumentation and analysis.
Prof. Mohseni's group (Bio-inspired Sensors and Optoelectronics) pushes III-V semiconductor photodetector technology toward thermodynamic and quantum limits of photon sensitivity. Key directions: (1) Nanoscale IR photodetectors: shrinking pixel dimensions below the diffraction limit using quantum confinement effects (InGaAs/InAlAs quantum well and dot structures) to improve sensitivity, bandwidth, and resolution simultaneously; (2) Superlattice photomultipliers β high-gain, low-noise avalanche photodetectors at room temperature approaching quantum-limited sensitivity for mid-wave and long-wave infrared detection; (3) Quantum sensing applications including squeezed-light-enhanced thermoreflectance imaging of electronic hotspots, and photon-counting receivers for quantum communications. Co-author on 275+ papers, 33+ US patents; NAI Fellow 2023; W.M. Keck Foundation Award, DARPA YFA, NSF CAREER. Fellow of SPIE and Optica. Also Professor of Physics and Astronomy.
Moler's lab builds scanning SQUID microscopes -- magnetic-flux sensors cooled to cryogenic temperatures and scanned within microns of a sample -- to image supercurrents, vortices, and interfacial magnetism in unconventional superconductors and topological materials with sensitivity and spatial resolution that complements ensemble NV-diamond magnetometry (which reaches pT/βHz via DEER/T1-type protocols) at a very different length and field scale.
Monteiro works on the theory and control of levitated optomechanical systems, including a stable 3D velocity feedback cooling scheme for independently controlling all three translational modes of an optically levitated nanoparticle with minimal cross-talk. Levitated optomechanics of this kind is being developed both as a force/impulse sensor of exquisite sensitivity and, in collaboration with UCL colleagues including Peter Barker, as a testbed for macroscopic quantum states relevant to proposed gravity-entanglement experiments.
Morello heads the Fundamental Quantum Technologies Laboratory and is the person who first read out the spin of a single electron, and then a single nucleus, in silicon. Current directions: high-spin donors (antimony-123, with eight nuclear levels) used as qudits and as sensors of local strain and electric field; nuclear acoustic resonance, in which a strain wave rather than a magnetic field drives the nuclear spin; engineered decoherence experiments as tests of quantum foundations; and precision tomography of multi-qubit donor registers. The group's donors are among the longest-coherence solid-state spins known (seconds for nuclei). Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work β DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity β a single-donor nuclear spin in silicon is functionally an NV centre with better coherence and worse readout: the same DEER, dynamical-decoupling and nuclear-register protocols apply, and the group's high-spin qudit work is aimed at exactly the multi-level sensing enhancements that the NV community is now chasing. Preferred attribute present: sensitivity and coherence, not fabrication, are the limiting variables here.
Morton directs UCL's Quantum Science and Technology Institute and is Deputy Director of the Q-BIOMED hub. His group manipulates electron and nuclear spins in nanoscale materials (silicon donors, diamond defects) to build quantum sensors, quantum memories, and quantum computing hardware, and within Q-BIOMED is pursuing magnetic-resonance quantum sensing at the single-cell level. He is also a co-founder of the quantum computing spinouts Quantum Motion and Phasecraft.