Dan Stamper-Kurn

Dan Stamper-Kurn is a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and also a Faculty Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  Along with his research group at Berkeley, Prof. Stamper-Kurn studies a wide range of phenomena in quantum science, using ultracold atomic gases and quantum states of light as his experimental tool.  In particular, his Berkeley group is known for its pioneering studies of magnetic phenomena occurring in ultracold atomic gases, of cavity optomechanics in the quantum mechanical regime, and also for the development of tools for precision and quantum measurement using ultracold atoms.  In 2020, Prof. Stamper-Kurn helped launch, and now serves as Director of the Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation, which is a multi-campus institute dedicated to addressing the fundamental challenges to the realization of the quantum computer, and which is one of five Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes funded by the US National Science Foundation as part of the National Quantum Initiative.

Stamper-Kurn obtained his PhD in atomic physics from MIT in the year 2000, was a Millikan Prize postdoctoral fellow at Caltech, and then joined the Physics faculty at Berkeley in 2001.  Among other recognitions, Prof. Stamper-Kurn is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Optica, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and also a recipient of the Siemens Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.