PREFERRED. Mavalvala's research (now balanced against her role as Dean of the School of Science) centers on gravitational-wave detection and quantum measurement science, including the original squeezed-light and quantum-noise work at LIGO that she led together with Matthew Evans. Given her administrative role, active new postdoc hiring in her own group is uncertain and should be confirmed directly.
Merklein is the independent PI within the Eggleton group most focused on the acoustic side of Brillouin physics: he demonstrated on-chip photon-phonon memory (coherently transferring an optical pulse into a long-lived acoustic excitation and back), and works on distributed Brillouin sensing in optical fibre and on the coherent control of travelling acoustic waves in waveguides. The distributed-sensing thread is a practical, sensitivity-limited measurement problem: recovering strain and temperature along kilometres of fibre from a very weak backscattered signal. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — phonon-mediated storage and readout is a complementary transduction channel to spin-based sensing, and the group is now pushing toward the quantum regime where the acoustic mode must be treated as a quantum object rather than a classical one. Early-career PI (DECRA) with genuine independence inside a large group.
Michler's IHFG grows and studies semiconductor quantum dots as on-demand single- and entangled-photon sources, including telecom-band emitters, on-chip Hanbury-Brown-Twiss/photonic integration, and atom-QD hybrid interfaces - core fundamental-light and quantum-photonic-sensing resources. Cleanroom epitaxy on site. In the broader landscape of NV-centre ensemble quantum sensing (DEER, nano-NMR, T1 relaxometry) operating near pT/sqrt(Hz) sensitivity, this work supplies nonclassical light sources that can enhance optical sensing.
Leonardo Midolo develops III-V optoelectronic quantum devices at NBI. Research: (1) nanomechanical quantum photonic integrated circuits (NOEMS) — GaAs waveguide phase shifters, routers, and switches for single-photon routing; (2) heterogeneous integration of quantum dot emitters on silicon and SiN platforms; (3) quantum key distribution with deterministic single-photon sources over field-installed dark fibre. Group established 2022; Beamfox spinout for proximity correction.
Mintert's theoretical group works on quantum information and quantum control, including protocols to deterministically prepare highly non-classical (non-Gaussian, Wigner-negative) states of massive mechanical oscillators via optomechanical interactions, entanglement quantification, and quantum simulation.
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 — 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.
Jörg Müller's Quantum Metrology group works on next-generation optical atomic clocks and superradiant lasers. Key experiments: cold strontium continuous superradiant laser (subnatural linewidth, pushing beyond traditional clock limitations); microresonator-based frequency combs; ultra-stable optical reference cavities; and cavity QED many-atom systems for clocks and sensing. The group is part of the EU iqClock project targeting operational optical lattice clocks.
Murthy leads the Nanoscale Quantum Optics group at ETH, studying light-matter interactions in nanostructures to engineer novel quantum states of light. Research directions: (1) Photon-photon interactions — achieving strong effective photon-photon interactions via coupling to quantum emitters in 2D materials and optical nanocavities; exploring photonic Mott insulators and collective quantum phases of light; (2) 2D semiconductor quantum emitters — localized excitons in TMD heterostructures as sources of single photons and entangled photon pairs; (3) Quantum light from cavities — engineering photon statistics and squeezing using cavity-QED with 2D materials; (4) Ultrafast quantum optics — attosecond-scale probing of light-matter entanglement. New group as of ~2023.
Nguyen's group at UCL (based at Royal Institution) focuses on magnetic and fluorescent nanoparticles for biomedical sensing and therapy. Research directions: (1) Magnetic nanoparticle synthesis — iron oxide (SPION) and other magnetic nanoparticles with controlled size, shape, and surface chemistry for MRI contrast and magnetic hyperthermia; (2) Biosensing platforms — functionalized nanoparticles as MRI-detectable sensors for specific biomolecular targets; magnetic particle imaging (MPI) for real-time tracking; (3) Plasmonic nanoparticles — gold nanoparticles for optical biosensing and photothermal therapy; (4) Fluorescent nanoparticles — QD- and dye-conjugated probes for live-cell imaging. Relevant to quantum sensing through magnetic nanoparticle platforms.
Novotny leads the Photonics Lab with a primary focus on levitodynamics. Research directions: (1) Ground-state cooling of levitated nanoparticles — demonstrated quantum control and motional ground state cooling of silica nanospheres in cryogenic free space (Nature 2021) and all 6 degrees of freedom simultaneously via coherent scattering (Nature Physics 2023); (2) Quantum delocalization and matter-wave interference of levitated nanoparticles (arXiv 2408.01264, 2024); (3) Cavity-mediated long-range interactions between multiple levitated nanoparticles, enabling collective quantum sensing arrays; (4) Optical cold damping, measurement-free coherent feedback (PRL 2025); (5) 2D optoelectronics — graphene/hBN/TMD-based laser detectors and modulators. Heavily cited levitodynamics review (Science 2021, joint with Quidant). Group feeds into applications in quantum-limited force sensing and macroscopic quantum tests.