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JQI Alumnus Wes Campbell Elected to APS DAMOP Leadership

April 11, 2024
A man in a checkered shirt and glasses with out-of-focus trees in the background

(Credit: Mackenzie Wagner)

JQI alumnus Wes Campbell was elected vice chair of the American Physics Society (APS) Division of Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics (DAMOP) executive committee. The committee’s efforts include performing outreach activities, promoting communication among our scientists and organizing the annual DAMOP meeting.

“I'm just happy to serve the community," says Campbell.

DAMOP was the first division to be created by the APS and focuses on research into the ways that atoms, simple molecules, electrons and light behave and interact with each other. Developments produced by the field are invaluable to other areas of physics, since many experiments rely on manipulating and precisely measuring atoms, molecules, charged particles or light . 

Campbell was at JQI from 2008 to 2012, first as a postdoctoral researcher working with JQI Adjunct Fellow Chris Monroe and then as an assistant research scientist. Currently, Campbell is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles where he leads a lab pursuing a variety of topics, from cooling molecules down to ultracold temperatures to using trapped ions—charged atoms—in quantum simulations and quantum computations.