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Organic functional materials development (design, synthesis & characterisation) for quantum based optoelectronics

Associate Professor Shih-Chun Lo (Lawrence)

Lawrence held a prestigious Swire Scholarship while carrying out his PhD study on semiconductor material development for organic solar cells and light emitting diodes (LEDs) at Oxford University, UK (1996-2000). His post-doctoral research at Oxford University focused on the design, synthesis and characterisation of fluorescent and phosphorescent dendrimers for highly efficient LEDs. Dendrimers have been recognised internationally as the third main class of LED materials, alongside small molecules and polymers, in which he played a key role. In December 2007, he joined the University of Queensland as a Lecturer in Chemistry of Materials. His research work has focused on the development of new functional semiconductor materials for quantum based optoelectronic applications (e.g. solar cells, LEDs, photodetectors, sensors, superconductors & organic lasers) as well as clean energy generation.

Professor McIntyre develops and applies advanced imaging techniques to study flow environments. He conducts research within the Centre for Hypersonics where he implements a range of interferometric, spectroscopic and imaging techniques to probe the harsh environment generated in ground-based hypersonic facilities. He also has interests in the development of laser-based imaging methods in the field of Biophotonics including differential interference contrast microscopy and super-resolution coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy.

Dr Ross McKenzie's research interests are in the fields of: Condensed Matter Theory, Chemical Physics, and Quantum Many-Body Theory.

He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1989. His chief research projects are in the areas of:

Models for strongly correlated electron materials such as organic and cuprate superconductors

Magnetoresistance of layered metals including topological insulators

Excited states of organic molecules

Hydrogen bonding

Emergent phenomena in complex systems

The relationship between science and theology

A/Prof. Neely leads research projects on quantum turbulence in quasi-uniform 2D BEC superfluids, atomtronics, quantum sensing, and spinor condensates. He is an associate investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS) and an associate investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Biotechnology (QUBIC).

His career has spanned three institutions, first the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona, where he received his PhD in 2010 working with Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and quantum turbulence. Subsequently, he had a postdoctoral position at NIST (2010-2012), where he developed and advanced new techniques for midinfrared spectroscopy with pulsed lasers.

The Bose-Einstein condensation lab has openings for honours, PhD, and undergraduate projects. Please contact A/Prof. Neely (t.neely@uq.edu.au) regarding current opportunities.

Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Chemical Engineering and a member of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre led by Prof. Evgueni Jak.

He graduated with a Master in Chemistry (chemical thermodynamics) from Lomonosov's Moscow State University, Deparment of Chemistry in 2012. His Master's Thesis was "Thermodynamic optimization of the NaOH-Al(OH)3-Na2SiO3-H2O system for applications in Bayer's process of bauxite treatment" as part of a bigger project initiated in collaboration with Rusal company aimed at utilisation/valorisation of red mud residues accumulated during the production of aluminium oxide from bauxite ores.

In 2019, he completed a PhD in Metallurgical Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Canada within The Centre For Research in Computational Thermodynamics (CRCT), where he acquired expertise in FactSage software, multicomponent database development, and was included in the list of official collaborators of FactSage. His PhD thesis was "Thermodynamic optimization of the Na2O-K2O-Al2O3-CaO-MgO-B2O3-SiO2 system" sponsored by Glass Consortium including Corning and SCHOTT glass producers. The purpose of the database he developed was to assist the industry in designing new glasses with special properties: chemically hardened glasses (smartphones), technical glasses with high thermal and chemical resilience (boron-containing glasses), chemically inert glasses, etc.

Short after receiving his PhD, Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev accepted a position at The University of Queensland as part of the Pyrometallurgy Innovation Centre's team where he has an official title of Theme Leader in Thermodynamic Computations, combining his broad expertise in metallurgy, chemical engineering, applied mathematics, and programming.

Dr Evgenii Nekhoroshev has always been passionate about formalisation and automation of big research tasks. He started working on developing an automated solver for thermodynamic optimisation during his PhD thesis which was improved and finalised using the ideas of Prof. Evgueni Jak about real-time derivative matrix optimization and sensitivity analysis applicable to large multicomponent systems. His contribution to the Centre allowed to make transition to a continuous optimization approach when experimental and modelling streams of work in the Centre are efficiently combined together. It allows to include the most recent experimental datasets into a self-consistent database update with minimal time delays.

Dr Timo Nieminen received his PhD from The University of Queensland in 1996.

Dr Nieminen's research interests are in the fields of:

• Light Scattering
• Optical Trapping and Micromanipulation
• Computational Electromagnetics
• Photonics
• Biological and Industrial Applications of Light Scattering and the Interaction of Light and Matter

His chief research projects are in the areas of:

• Full-Wave Electromagnetic Modelling of the Production of Optical Forces and Torques in Laser Trapping
• Optical Measurement of Microscopic Forces and Torques
• Extremely Asymmetrical Scattering in Bragg Gratings
• Micro-Opto-Mechanical Systems (MOMS)

Megan O’Mara is a Professor and Group Leader at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), UQ. Her group uses multiscale modelling techniques to understand how changes in the biochemical environment of the cell membranes alters membrane properties and modulates the function of membrane proteins. She has research interests in multidrug resistance, computational drug design and delivery, biopolymers, and personalized medicine. Megan completed her PhD in biophysics at the Australian National University in 2005 before moving to the University of Calgary, Canada, to take up a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2009, she returned to Australia to join University of Queensland’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences as a UQ Postdoctoral Fellow, before commencing an ARC DECRA in 2012 where she continued her computational work on membrane protein dynamics. In 2015, Megan joined the Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University in 2015 as Rita Cornforth Fellow and Senior Lecturer. In 2019 she was promoted to Associate Professor and was Associate Director (Education) of the Research School of Chemistry ANU in 2019-2021. In April 2022 she relocated to AIBN.

I studied Technical Mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology. I also earned a Master's degree in Law and I finished the first ("non-clinical") part of Medical Studies at the University of Vienna. I earned my PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Vienna in 2007. My PhD advisor was Christian Schmeiser, my co-advisor was Peter Markowich. I spent several months at the University of Buenos Aires working with C. Lederman and at the ENS-Paris rue d'Ulm in the group of B. Perthame.

Before coming to UQ, I held post-doc positions at the Wolfgang Pauli Insitute (Vienna), University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (RICAM). In 2013 I won an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). I was a post-doc researcher in the group of Alex Mogilner first at UC Davis, then at the Courant Institute of Math. Sciences (New York University).

I research extrasolar planets - planets around other stars - and focus on developing and applying new data science approaches for detecting and characterizing them. I have taken nearly every approach to exoplanet and stellar observation, including transits, radial velocities, direct imaging, and asteroseismology.

As an ARC DECRA Fellow I'm mainly working on exoplanet direct imaging with the James Webb Space Telescope, and especially how we can use differentiable & probabilistic programming to enhance data analysis to detect faint objects in noisy data. I also work on radio astronomy to study planets' magnetic interactions with their host stars, and using radiocarbon in tree rings as a tracer of long term solar activity.

I grew up in Sydney, New South Wales, and studied for my Honours and Masters at the University of Sydney. I studied abroad at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2017 I completed my DPhil in Astrophysics at Balliol College, Oxford. From 2017-20 was a NASA Sagan Fellow at the NYU Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and Center for Data Science. I'm now a Lecturer in Astrophysics and DECRA Fellow at the University of Queensland.

I'm into open source, open science, and climate action. I was a member of the winning Balliol College team in the 2016-17 series of University Challenge on BBC2, with the wonderful Joey Goldman, Freddy Potts, and Jacob Lloyd. Sometimes I write: see my latest piece in The Monthly, about the possible discovery of phosphine on Venus.

This is an automatically generated university page - my real website is https://people.smp.uq.edu.au/BenPowell/

Professor Ralph obtained a BSc Hons from Macquarie University in 1989 and a PhD in Physics from The Australian National University in 1993. He has held three Australian Research Council Fellowships - Postdoctoral, QEII and Professorial. He is currently Node Director for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of Queensland.

Dr. Markus Rambach's research interests are in the field of quantum optics, especially on single photon sources to create photonic qubits and qudits.

Markus was born and raised in a small alpine town in Austria, before doing his BSc and MSc at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). He did his undergrad in Physics, before completing an MSc in experimental quantum physics in the prestigious group of Pro. Rainer Blatt. Here, is where he met a young renegade Brit who had just completed his PhD in the research group of Prof. Andrew White at the University of Queensland. Inspired by the stories, Markus decided to have a look for himself and moved to Brisbane, where he completed his PhD with Andrew in 2017. After a short intermezzo for a Postdoc in Scotland, he moved back to Brisbane 2019 and has been a research fellow at UQ ever since. Markus' research interests are in the weird but beautiful world of quantum physics, where he is investigating ways to make the upcoming quantum internet a reality. Over the years he has worked with verious single photon platforms and used them for quantum information experiments. Recently he changed gear and is now investigating the infinitely-sized space of higher-dimensional quantum systems, so-called qudits.

Markus enjoys community engagement, be it as chair of the SMP Early and Mid-Career Academics Committee or as a member of the EQUS Public Engagement Committee. He particular likes the sparks in people's eyes when they start to understand a concept or idea.

Working in theoretical atomic physics and particle astrophysics. My research focusses on high-precision atomic structure calculations, and how atomic processes can be used for testing fundamental theories, probing for physics beyond the standard model, and searching for dark matter. This is complimentary to the high-energy tests performed at CERN. Some research highlights include: searching for variations in the fundamental constants near the super-massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy [1]; using decades of archived atomic clock data from the GPS satellites to search for signatures of dark matter [2]; performing high-precision calculations of symmetry violations in atoms, allowing the most precise low-energy test of the standard model to date [3-5]; and proposing and quantifying novel experimental signatures of dark matter that exploit atomic (rather than the typical nuclear) phenomena, opening the door to a wide range of previously “invisible” models [6-9].

1. A. Hees, T. Do, B. M. Roberts, A. M. Ghez, S. Nishiyama, R. O. Bentley, A. K. Gautam, S. Jia, T. Kara, J. R. Lu, H. Saida, S. Sakai, M. Takahashi, and Y. Takamori, Search for a Variation of the Fine Structure Constant around the Supermassive Black Hole in Our Galactic Center, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 081101 (2020).
2. B. M. Roberts, G. Blewitt, C. Dailey, M. Murphy, M. Pospelov, A. Rollings, J. Sherman, W. Williams, and A. Derevianko, Search for Domain Wall Dark Matter with Atomic Clocks on Board Global Positioning System Satellites, Nature Comm. 8, 1195 (2017).
3. V. A. Dzuba, J. C. Berengut, V. V. Flambaum, and B. M. Roberts, Revisiting Parity Nonconservation in Cesium, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 203003 (2012).
4. B. M. Roberts and J. S. M. Ginges, Nuclear Magnetic Moments of Francium-207–213 from Precision Hyperfine Comparisons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 063002 (2020).
5. G. Sanamyan, B. M. Roberts, and J. S. M. Ginges, Empirical Determination of the Bohr-Weisskopf Effect in Cesium and Improved Tests of Precision Atomic Theory in Searches for New Physics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 053001 (2023).
6. B. M. Roberts, Y. V. Stadnik, V. A. Dzuba, V. V. Flambaum, N. Leefer, and D. Budker, Limiting P-Odd Interactions of Cosmic Fields with Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 081601 (2014).
7. B. M. Roberts, V. V. Flambaum, and G. F. Gribakin, Ionization of Atoms by Slow Heavy Particles, Including Dark Matter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 023201 (2016).
8. B. M. Roberts et al., Search for Transient Variations of the Fine Structure Constant and Dark Matter Using Fiber-Linked Optical Atomic Clocks, New J. Phys. 22, 093010 (2020).
9. E. Savalle, A. Hees, F. Frank, E. Cantin, P.-E. Pottie, B. M. Roberts, L. Cros, B. T. McAllister, and P. Wolf, Searching for Dark Matter with an Optical Cavity and an Unequal-Delay Interferometer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 051301 (2021).

Dr Jacqui Romero is an expert in experimental quantum information. Her research is focused on using higher-dimensional systems for exploring curious quantum physics phenomena and developing future quantum technologies. She is the group leader of the research team Qudits@UQ, there's more information on her group's webpage.

Jacqui was born and bred in Manila, Philippines. Hearing her high school physics teacher complain about quantum physics, she became curious and googled "quantum physics"—she has been hooked ever since. She holds BS Applied Physics magna cum laude and MS Physics degrees from the University of the Philippines. She finished her PhD at the University of Glasgow (in sunny Scotland!) where she was a researcher for seven years. In 2015, she moved to Brisbane to join the Quantum Technology group at the University of Queensland. In 2016 she took up an ARC DECRA fellowship with the same group. In 2019, she took up a Westpac Research Fellowship and formed her own team, Qudits@UQ. Jacqui is recognised for moving the shape of photons to mainstream quantum information. She has received several prestigious national and international awards which include: a L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women In Science award in 2017 (one of four in Australia), the Ruby Payne-Scott Medal of the Australian Institute of Physics for excellence in early-career research in 2018, and a L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women In Science International Rising Talent Award in 2019 (one of fifteen awards globally).

She is currently an associate professor and Westpac Research Fellow. She is also a chief investigator at the Centre of Excellence For Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS).

Outside work, she is a busy mum to three lovely boys, and an occasional painter. She also loves sharing her research to the wider community, example here.

Professor Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop’s research interests are in the fields of atom optics, laser micromanipulation, nano optics, quantum computing and biophotonics.

She has long standing experience with lasers, linear and nonlinear high-resolution spectroscopy, laser micromanipulation, and atom cooling and trapping. She was one of the originators of the widely used laser enhanced ionisation spectroscopy technique and is well known for her recent work in laser micromanipulation. She has been also working (Nanotechnology Laboratory, Göteborg, Sweden) in the field of nano- and microfabrication in order to produce the microstructures needed for optically driven micromachines and tips for the scanning force microscopy with optically trapped stylus. Recently she led the team that observed dynamical tunnelling in quantum chaotic system. Additionally Prof. Rubinsztein-Dunlop has led the new effort into development of new nano-structured quantum dots for quantum computing and other advanced device related applications.

I am a Cosmologist studying the properties of the Universe on the largest scales.

By mapping the positions of millions of galaxies, I investigate the unknown physics of the dark energy which drives the evolution of the Universe today, and the physics just after the Big Bang, when the ripples which grew under gravity to become galaxies were created.

I am actively participating in the key experiments designed to understand dark energy and gravity. I am co-chair of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) lensing working group, and an active member of the Vera Rubin Observatory (LSST) and the Dark Energy Survey (DES). In the past, I had led science with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, one of the major quests of contemporary physics that has spurred advancement in answering a range of fundamental questions about the origins of the universe.

I am passionate about communicating top-level research ideas to audiences outside our immediate academic sub-community. I have experience on a variety of media, including radio, public talks and lectures to local schools, science festivals and amateur astronomy groups, outreach activities at Stargazing Live events, as well as through written pieces.

I am an advocate for making STEM field accessible to everyone. During my career, I took part into different initiatives aiming to reduce structural barriers faced by different minorities in academia and inspire the next generation of STEM careers. I am part of the Women in Science Association with the aim to foster a community for young women in STEM, within and beyond the academic community. I worked and volunteered at N.G.O. centres, in Italy and Australia supporting young students to overcome educational inequality caused by poverty and other conditions.

Since 2021 I am on the Early Career Chapter committee for the Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA) to promote and assist the career development of early and mid-career researchers in the Australian astronomy community. I am also part of the Wellbeing ambassador program at University of Queensland, to promote and assist the career development of early and mid-career researchers in the Australian astronomy community.