David Awschalom, PhD

David Awschalom is the Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering and Physics at the University of Chicago, Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and Director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange. Professor Awschalom works in the areas of semiconductor spintronics and quantum information engineering.

Professor Awschalom’s research involves understanding and controlling the spins of electrons, ions, and nuclei in semiconductors for fundamental studies of quantum systems, as well as potential applications in computing, sensing, and communication. He received his B.Sc. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his PhD in experimental physics from Cornell University. Professor Awschalom was a research staff member and manager of the Nonequilibrium Physics Department at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. Prior to joining the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, he served as the Peter J. Clarke Professor and Director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and Director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation.