Physics Illinois alum Awschalom, world expert in spintronics, delivers colloquium

Wednesday, April 17, the Seventh Annual Charles P. Slichter Colloquium will feature world-renowned research scientist in spintronics and quantum information engineering, David Awschalom. His research holds great promise for the advancement of quantum computing, medical imaging, encryption, and other technologies. The talk starts at 4 p.m. in 141 Loomis Laboratory; for an abstract, please follow this link. 

Awschalom, who was recently elected to the European Academy of Sciences—a rare honor for a U.S. scientist—received his bachelor's degree from Physics Illinois in 1978 before going on to earn his master's and doctoral degrees at Cornell University. He is a faculty member at UCSB's Institute for Molecular Engineering, but will soon move to the University of Chicago, where he has accepted a position. He holds several patents, including one in quantum computing,

Awschalom is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society. His other honors include the American Physical Society’s Oliver Buckley Prize, the European Physical Society’s Europhysics Prize, the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the Materials Research Society’s Turnbull Award, and, from the International Union of Pure and Applied Research, the International Magnetism Prize and the Néel Medal.