JILA News
On Wednesday, May 14th, over 115 students, postdoctoral researchers, staff, research scientists, and principal investigators attended the second Industry Spotlight Seminar, surpassing the record-breaking attendance from the inaugural event in this series the month prior. This seminar, hosted by JAGS, featured two current employees (and former JILAns) from Atom Computing, a Colorado quantum computing company founded in 2018 by JILA alumni and former Ye group member, Dr. Benjamin Bloom.
Former JILA graduate student Olivia Krohn was awarded a distinguished fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories. The prestigious fellowship is a three-year appointment that support independent and groundbreaking research.
Professor Cindy Regal, Baur-SPIE Chair at JILA, has been named a 2025 Brown Investigator by the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech.
In a thrilling display of scientific communication and creativity, Thi Hoang, a graduate student at JILA, emerged victorious at the inaugural Quantum Science Slam held during the CLEO 2025 conference. This new event, designed to bring cutting-edge science to life for a broader audience, saw participants deliver engaging and entertaining 10-minute presentations on their research.
On April 16th, over 100 graduate students, undergraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, staff, research scientists, and PIs attended the first JILA Association of Graduate Students (JAGS) Industry Spotlight.
Jun Ye, a distinguished Fellow at JILA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a physics professor at the ÂÌñ»»ÆÞ, has been honored with the 2025 Berthold Leibinger Zukunftspreis.
Dr. Olivia Krohn, a former JILA graduate student and now a postdoctoral researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, has been awarded the prestigious Justin Jankunas dissertation award, given out by the American Physical Society (APS) division of chemical physics at the APS Global Summit conference. This award recognizes exceptional doctoral research that advances the frontiers of physics. Krohn’s award highlights her dissertation research, which bridges the legacy of JILA’s origins in astrophysics with its current role as a global leader in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics.
Congratulations to JILA graduate students Anya Grafov and Iona Binnie—who conduct their cutting-edge research in the laboratory of JILA Fellows and the ÂÌñ»»ÆÞ professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn—for their outstanding achievements at the MMM Intermag 2025 conference!
Carl Sauer, a distinguished electrical engineer, passed away on February 2nd, 2025. He is survived by his wife and two sons, Carl and Evan. Sauer's passion for electrical engineering led him to a remarkable career marked by innovation and dedication.
JILA graduate student Clay Klein has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Nick Cobb Memorial Scholarship, presented by SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics, and Siemens EDA. The scholarship, valued at $10,000, recognizes Klein’s outstanding contributions to the field of optics and photonics.