Ryan Barnett, a former JQI postdoctoral fellow at the Condensed Matter Theory Center (CMTC), is now a ‘Lecturer in Condensed Matter Theory’ (UK equivalent of assistant professor) at Imperial College in London. Ryan is a theoretical physicist interested in collective effects in ultracold atomic gases. While at the JQI his research focused on spinor condensates, non-equilibrium dynamics, and synthetic gauge fields. Much of his recent work was motivated by ongoing experimental activities at the JQI. In addition to continuing this line of research, he will teach Mathematical Physics during the 2012-2013 academic year.

Campbell is a NIST JQI fellow and works in the Laser Cooling and Trapping group. In her atom circuits lab, reserachers probe Na BECs in toroidal traps. The goals of these experiments include studying superfluidity, as well as superfluid analogs to superconducting circuits. A second experiment with ultracold strontium is being built. She received a Ph.D from MIT in 2006, where she worked with Wolfgang Ketterle and Dave Pritchard. There, she used Rb BECs in optical lattices to study atom interferometry, nonlinear atom optics and the superfluid – Mott insulator phase transition. These experiments included the first direct observation of the atomic recoil momentum in dispersive media. More recently, she worked with Jun Ye on precision measurements and frequency metrology with an ⁸⁷Sr optical lattice clock. 

Hafezi is a senior research associate and works at the interface of condensed matter theory and quantum optics. The focus of his research is on theoretical and experimental investigations of artificial gauge fields and topological order in photonics systems. Such systems can be exploited as robust optical devices insensitive to disorder, which is the subject of his NSF Physics Frontier Center’s seed funding program. Moreover, in the presence of strong optical nonlinearity, such systems are expected to exhibit fractional quantum Hall physics, providing a platform for potentially observing anoynic statistics. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2009 where he worked with Mikhail Lukin and Eugene Demler. There, he studied strongly correlated physics in AMO systems. In particular, he worked on the topological characterization of ultracold atoms in 2D and also non-equilibrium dynamics of strongly interacting photons in 1D.