Summary: Kasevich group pioneered atom-interferometric gravimeters and the 10-meter atomic fountain; strong overlap between physics, applied physics, and SLAC for precision tests of gravity.
Notes: Well-funded, close collaboration with SLAC and Ginzton Laboratory; large postdoc community in the Bay Area quantum ecosystem.
Warnings: Extremely high cost of living; housing near campus is very tight even with postdoc housing programs.
A pioneer of circuit quantum electrodynamics, Schuster's group uses superconducting qubits and microwave resonators both as quantum-information platforms and as ultra-sensitive quantum-limited sensors/spectrometers, extending qubit-based readout to precision spectroscopy of otherwise inaccessible microwave-frequency phenomena.
Shutt co-founded the CDMS/SuperCDMS cryogenic solid-state dark-matter detector program and is a leader of the LZ liquid-xenon experiment, developing ultra-sensitive detectors for direct dark-matter detection at the single-quantum level.
Simon's lab engineers strong, atom-mediated interactions between photons in optical cavities -- using Rydberg dressing of intracavity atoms -- to synthesize interacting quantum photonic matter and study fundamental nonclassical light phenomena, effectively building tunable many-body systems out of light itself.
Soh's lab engineers aptamer- and SOMAmer-based electrochemical biosensors capable of real-time, continuous molecular measurement (drugs, metabolites, proteins) directly in living systems, aiming for closed-loop, quantitative point-of-care and in vivo diagnostics.
Ting's lab invented proximity-dependent enzymatic labeling technologies (APEX, TurboID) that map the spatial proteome and transcriptome of living cells with organelle-level resolution, and develops genetically encoded fluorescent/voltage biosensors -- engineering biology's own molecular machinery into quantitative optical reporters.
Vuckovic's lab uses inverse-designed nanophotonic cavities and waveguides to couple diamond (NV/SiV) and other solid-state spin defects to light, building integrated quantum photonic devices for quantum sensing, networking, and single-photon sources.
Wang develops giant-magnetoresistance (GMR) spin-valve biosensor chips that detect magnetic-nanoparticle-tagged biomolecules with high sensitivity and multiplexing for protein and nucleic-acid diagnostics -- a solid-state magnetic-sensing approach to biosensing that sits alongside NV-ensemble and OPM-based approaches at a very different sensitivity/format tradeoff.
Zare's group develops laser and mass-spectrometric methods -- including single-cell mass spectrometry and mass spectrometry imaging of neuropeptides -- to chemically profile individual cells and tissue sections with high molecular specificity, alongside long-standing work in microdroplet and chiral-selective chemistry.