Summary: UChicago anchors the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) — the US's most concentrated quantum ecosystem, partnering Argonne, Fermilab, JPL, and multiple Chicago-area universities. The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) hosts world-class quantum sensing groups: Bhave (levitated optomechanics, quantum-limited force sensing); Bhave/Schuster (superconducting qubit sensing); Bhave/Bhave connections across mechanical and electromagnetic sensing. The Department of Physics hosts Gregor Engel's group on quantum coherence in biology. The James Franck Institute bridges physics and chemistry for quantum optical sensing. Argonne's Advanced Photon Source and Fermilab's quantum sensing programs are accessible to UChicago postdocs via joint appointments.
Notes: Top private R1; strong quantum ecosystem via Chicago Quantum Exchange. PME, Physics, Chemistry, and A&A all active. Partner institutions include Argonne and Fermilab.
Hogan proposed that the holographic principle implies a fundamental, universal quantum uncertainty ('holographic noise') in the transverse position of spacetime at the Planck scale, and co-led the Fermilab Holometer -- twin co-located, power-recycled Michelson interferometers -- to search for it, ruling out the simplest models to high significance. This is a distinct fundamental-light-physics/quantum-sensing approach from squeezed-light-enhanced GW interferometers (e.g., LIGO), using precision laser interferometry to probe quantum properties of spacetime itself rather than squeezing quantum noise in a detector.
Quantum information theorist with strong focus on quantum sensing. Directions: (1) error-correction-enhanced quantum sensing protocols surpassing Heisenberg limit; (2) quantum transduction theory for microwave-optical interfaces; (3) global-scale quantum network architecture; (4) room-temperature NV-based nanoscale magnetometry theory; (5) sub-wavelength quantum imaging protocols. Works closely with experimental quantum sensing groups at UChicago and beyond.
Kasthuri pioneered automated large-volume serial electron microscopy ('connectomics') to reconstruct complete synaptic wiring diagrams of the brain, and is now exploring synchrotron X-ray and photoemission electron microscopy (with the King lab) to remove imaging-speed bottlenecks and scale reconstructions toward whole-mouse and eventually human brains, comparing development, aging, and species differences. This is squarely the kind of resolution-pushing biological imaging the filter targets, achieving nanometer-scale synaptic resolution across cubic-millimeter-to-whole-brain volumes.
King develops polarization- and time-resolved PEEM together with ultrafast (scanning) transmission electron microscopy to image charge-carrier, exciton, and phonon dynamics with nanoscale (down to ~25 nm) spatial resolution at buried interfaces and in 2D materials such as black phosphorus. Her group is now retrofitting a high-throughput PEEM, in collaboration with the Kasthuri lab, for whole-brain connectomics -- an unpreferred/borderline inclusion since the core program is materials-science imaging rather than biosensing, but one that is directly extending resolution-pushing microscopy into neuroscience.
Klein pairs van der Waals heterostructure fabrication with a cryogenic scanning-probe 'Atomic Single Electron Transistor,' built on a quantum-twisting-microscope platform, to directly image sub-moire electrostatic potential landscapes with ultrasensitive, high-spatial-resolution electrometry. This is an unpreferred/borderline quantum-sensing inclusion: the sensor is an SET-based electrometer rather than an NV-ensemble magnetometer (which reaches pT/sqrt(Hz) via DEER/NMR/T1 protocols), but it shares the goal of pushing single-defect-level sensitivity for imaging quantum materials.
Designs programmable DNA nanodevices as quantitative fluorescent reporters to map second messengers in real time inside specific organelles of living cells. Research directions: (1) DNA origami ion-sensing nanodevices for pH, Cl-, Ca2+, HOCl, and membrane voltage with single-organelle addressability; (2) targeting nanodevices to endosomes, lysosomes, mitochondria, and ER to dissect organelle biology and disease mechanisms; (3) in vivo deployment in C. elegans and Drosophila. NIH Director's Pioneer Award 2022.
Develops quantum sensing platforms at the biology interface. Core NV-center work: (1) widefield NV magnetic imaging of action potentials in neurons and cardiac tissue; (2) NV-based single-molecule NMR at 14 T resolving molecular structure with single-molecule sensitivity; (3) charge-sensitive shallow NV nanoprobes monitoring real-time cellular electrophysiology; (4) biocompatible diamond surface functionalization enabling multiplexed DNA microarray biosensing; (5) fluorescent-protein spin qubits as biological alternatives to diamond NV (2025 paper, Physics World Top-10 Breakthrough). Runs full NV stack: hot implantation, widefield and confocal ODMR, T1/T2/Hahn echo/DEER/Rabi, automated fitting pipelines. 2026 Sloan Fellow. PhD Lukin/Harvard; postdoc Chu/Stanford. Argonne joint appointment.
Experimental cosmologist developing next-generation CMB detector arrays. Directions: (1) CMB-S4 detector development — leading TES bolometer and MKID array design for 500,000-detector focal plane; (2) South Pole Telescope SPT-3G operations and analysis; (3) cryogenic readout electronics including SQUID multiplexing at millikelvin temperatures; (4) quantum-limited photon detection at mm/submm wavelengths. APS Fellow.
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.
Uses information theory and statistical physics to study neural circuit sensing. Directions: (1) multi-electrode array recording from salamander and mouse retina to map how retinal ganglion cells encode and predict natural visual scenes; (2) information-theoretic quantification of predictive coding strategies in sensory neurons; (3) developing statistical models of population neural codes. Technique focus: high-density multi-electrode arrays as a sensing platform for neural population dynamics. Joint appointment Organismal Biology and Anatomy.