Hear from Michelson Postdoctoral Prize winner at talks today, tomorrow

A new assistant professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh won the 2015 Michelson Postdoctoral Prize for his work exploring how to make and control quantum electrodynamic systems.

He will spend the week in residence at Case Western Reserve University and give talks to the campus community.

Hartridge, who earned his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and did his postdoctoral work at Yale University, makes qubits—the analogue for bits used in traditional computing—from superconducting materials that work at microwave frequencies.

“This is stuff you’d make cell-phones with, translated to the quantum regime,” Hartridge said. “But, instead of building these circuits from a million atoms, we’re building them from one atom up, which may provide access and control we haven’t had before.”

He will give a physics colloquium titled “Remote Entanglement in superconducting quantum information” today (Nov. 12) at 4:15 p.m. in Rockefeller Building, Room 301. Coffee and cookies will be served beforehand.

Hatridge also will give a seminar describing how the same superconducting devices can be applied to low field MRI Friday, Nov. 13, at 12:30 p.m. in Rockefeller Building, Room 221.

The Michelson Postdoctoral Prize was established by physics professors Lawrence Krauss and Glenn Starkman in 1997 and has become one of the premier awards for young PhDs in physics in the United States. The prizewinner spends one week in residence at Case Western Reserve and presents a colloquium and three seminars to the Department of Physics.