Cassidy (formerly Microsoft/Sydney) builds hybrid superconductor-semiconductor quantum devices and the microwave measurement chains needed to read them out: dispersive gate sensing, superconducting resonators coupled to semiconductor nanostructures, and quantum-limited parametric amplification. The programme sits at the boundary between quantum computing hardware and quantum sensing — many of the same circuits used to read a qubit are, viewed differently, near-quantum-limited detectors of microwave photons or of charge. 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 — a superconducting-resonator readout chain with a quantum-limited amplifier is the leading route to inductively-detected spin resonance at sensitivities well below the pT/sqrt(Hz) regime accessible to optical NV ensembles, and Cassidy's group has the full stack of skills required. Mid-career, actively building; good autonomy for a postdoc.

Specializes in quantum information and hybrid quantum systems. Directions: (1) superconducting qubit quantum computing and error correction; (2) hybrid quantum systems coupling superconducting qubits to mechanical resonators, spin systems, and optical photons; (3) quantum-limited microwave amplification; (4) co-PI DARPA QuSeN — quantum sensing of neutrinos via phonon-coupled SC qubit sensors (2025). Director Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility (PNF). AAAS and APS Fellow.

Croot returned from Princeton to found Sydney's Superconducting Quantum Circuits Laboratory. The programme uses superconducting circuits both as quantum processors and as extremely sensitive probes: coupling microwave resonators and qubits to other degrees of freedom (mechanical modes, semiconductor structures, spins) to build hybrid systems, and developing the quantum-limited amplification chain that makes single-microwave-photon detection possible. 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 — superconducting circuits are the principal competitor technology for detecting the weak microwave signals that NV ensembles read magnetically; a quantum-limited or squeezed microwave amplifier is what lets an inductively-detected spin ensemble reach — and beat — the pT/sqrt(Hz) regime. Newly established, well-equipped lab; high autonomy for a postdoc and active recruitment as the lab builds out.

Devlin is a Royal Society URF at the Centre for Cold Matter building a new experiment to detect axion and dark matter particles. His prior work at CERN's BASE collaboration (Penning trap antiproton experiment) used the ultra-sensitive superconducting detection circuit of a cryogenic Penning trap to set new constraints on axion-like particle couplings to photons (~2.79 neV/c² range; PRL 2021). At Imperial he is developing a Penning trap single-photon counter concept using a single trapped electron to detect 30–60 GHz photons from axion-photon conversion in a strong magnetic field (arXiv 2601.05472, March 2026), targeting axion masses of 124–248 μeV. This approach could overcome the standard quantum noise limit that hampers conventional haloscope searches at high mass. Active PDRA posting open May 2025.

Dzurak leads the silicon CMOS quantum dot spin qubit programme at UNSW and co-founded Diraq, the company commercialising it. The group demonstrated the first silicon MOS qubit, two-qubit logic in silicon, and has pushed toward fidelities above the fault-tolerance threshold in industrially-manufactured CMOS devices, including work on gate-stack engineering for low charge noise and on single-electron-transistor charge sensing for readout. 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 — the relevant transferable asset is the readout: the single-electron-transistor and gate-based dispersive sensors this group builds are among the most sensitive electrometers in existence, the charge-domain analogue of pT/sqrt(Hz) magnetometry. Caveat against the stated preference: the programme is now heavily fabrication- and yield-driven and closely tied to a commercial roadmap, so a sensing-focused postdoc would be somewhat off the group's main axis.

Simon Groeblacher's lab probes quantum physics at meso- and macroscopic scales using mechanical motion, rare-earth ion emitters, and superconducting qubits. Key research directions: (1) quantum optomechanics with photonic crystal nano-beam resonators deep in the resolved-sideband regime; (2) silicon defect emitters (rare-earth doped silicon) for quantum network nodes; (3) quantum acoustics experiments coupling mechanical resonators to superconducting qubits. The lab fabricates all devices in-house at Kavli Nanolab and has received NWO Summit Grant for 'Quantum Limits' and QDNL/NWO grant for quantum network nodes.

Explores boundary between condensed-matter physics and quantum sensing using superconductor-semiconductor circuits. Directions: (1) gate-tunable superconductor-semiconductor parametric amplifier for quantum-limited readout (PRA 2023); (2) room-temperature capacitive strong coupling to mechanical motion for electromechanical sensing (Nano Letters 2025); (3) quantum criticality in Josephson junction arrays; (4) synthetic Hamiltonians in hybrid SC-semi devices probing hidden material behavior. IST Austria → Microsoft → JILA → UChicago Nov 2023.

Develops superconducting qubits and QND microwave single-photon detectors, applying them both to scalable quantum computing architectures and to axion/dark-photon dark-matter search experiments as ultra-sensitive quantum sensors.

Studies atomically thin 2D quantum materials and their sensing applications. Directions: (1) tr-ARPES and ultrafast spectroscopy of non-equilibrium electronic dynamics in TMDs and graphene heterostructures; (2) 2D material nanophotonic devices for light sensing and emission; (3) wafer-scale CVD growth of hBN, MoS2, WSe2 for integrated quantum devices; (4) scanning probe characterization of local optical and electronic properties. Key tool: time-resolved photoemission as ultrafast electronic structure sensing.

Pla is the strongest single match in this cohort for a candidate whose background is sensitivity-limited spin detection. His laboratory does inductively-detected electron spin resonance at millikelvin using high-quality-factor superconducting microresonators, read out through Josephson and travelling-wave parametric amplifiers operating at the quantum limit of added noise. The result is ESR sensitivity improved by many orders of magnitude over commercial spectrometers — the group's stated target is single-spin inductive detection — and, in parallel, the development of near-ideal degenerate parametric amplifiers and squeezed microwave states as the readout resource that makes it possible. Applications explicitly include chemistry and biology, where the goal is to do EPR on samples far too small for a conventional spectrometer. 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 — this is the microwave-inductive route to the same destination: where an NV ensemble reaches pT/sqrt(Hz) by optical readout of many spins, Pla reaches comparable or better spin sensitivity by making the microwave detection chain quantum-limited, and the DEER and dynamical-decoupling sequences are shared verbatim. Preferred attribute present in the strongest form: cutting-edge sensitivity, not device fabrication, is the object.