People at the Quantum Device Lab, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford

People

Principal Investigator

Natalia Ares

Associate Professor

Dr. Ares leads the research group focusing on quantum behaviour in nanoscale devices. Her work explores the manipulation of quantum systems and the development of quantum technologies. She is dedicated to advancing understanding in quantum thermodynamics and the application of machine learning in quantum devices.

Project Manager

Maria Fuentes Perez

I am the project manager for Natalia Ares's team. With a background in physics, I completed my PhD at the CNB (Spain), focusing on the interface of physics and biology. Afterward, I joined Imperial College London (UK) as a postdoc before moving into the private biotech sector, where I worked as both an operations and project manager. Currently, I manage the portfolio of projects for Natalia and her team.

Post-docs

Federico Fedele

Senior Research Associate

My main research area is on quantum technologies and nanoscale quantum devices that allow fine control over individual charges and spins used to encode and manipulate quantum information. Additionally, I am interested in hybrid devices, in which individual quantum systems are coupled to nanomechanical resonators such that their thermodynamic quantities can be measured and harnessed to further optimize these quantum systems.

Yikai Yang

Royal Society – Newton International Fellow

Dr. Yikai Yang holds a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from Lanzhou University in China. He then pursued a M.Sc. in experimental physics at University of Alberta in Canada, focusing on unconventional superconductors. After working in industry for four years, he joined EPFL in Switzerland for a Ph.D. program under the supervision of Dr. Henrik M. Ronnow, investigating quantum critical behaviours of strongly hybridised electro-nuclear spin states. In 2023, he joined Dr. Natalia Ares' group at the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral research assistant, working on various topics in Quantum Thermodynamics. Since April 2024, he holds a Newton International Fellowship from the Royal Society with a research focus on the materialisation of quantum engines.

Parth Girdhar

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr. Parth Girdhar received B.Sc (Advanced) 1st class Honours majoring in physics, mathematics and thesis on theoretical cosmology, and Ph.D. on theoretical foundations of quantum physics, both from the University of Sydney. Parth has completed postdoctoral research at the University of New South Wales. Research interests include machine learning for quantum device control, physical machine learning, quantum foundations and information theory.

Dr Joseph Hickie

Designing algorithms to improve quantum dot device readout and working on pulse optimisation for semiconductor qubits.

DPhil Students

Marek Rychetský

Marek is a DPhil student in the group, working on machine learning for tuning quantum dots.

Jonathan Dexter

Quantum thermodynamics and foundations.

Pranav Vaidhyanathan

Theory of open quantum systems, specifically interested in investigating continuous measurements and feedback control in non-Markovian systems.

Lucas Schorling

Lucas graduated with a BSc in Engineering Science from the Technical University of Munich and an MSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of Oxford. Current research focuses on developing machine learning algorithms to tune and control quantum devices, ranging from meta-learning to Bayesian optimization.

Cornelius Carlsson

I completed an integrated MEng in Materials Science at Imperial College London, followed by an MSc in Applied Physics at the Technical University of Delft. During my MSc thesis, I focused on probing charge noise using quantum device crossbars. After an internship at IBM, where I worked on designing reflectometry circuits, I am now at Oxford researching autonomous tuning methods for scalable spin-qubit architectures.

Vivek Wadhia

My research focuses on noise characterisation and mitigation in superconducting and semiconducting qubits. I am particularly interested in the interplay between noise/errors, thermal effects and qubit benchmarking.

Sonali Goel

Sonali graduated with an MEng in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford, where they specialized in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, control, and robotics. For the final-year project, Sonali collaborated with the Natalia Ares' Group to simulate single and two qubit gate operations on superconducting qubits (transmons). This involved developing a custom simulator and an optimizer leveraging Bayesian optimization to identify optimal pulse shapes for precise gate execution. To enhance the efficiency of the optimization process, Sonali integrated meta-learning to dynamically adjust hyper-parameters, accelerating convergence and improving performance. As a DPhil student, Sonali is now focusing on quantum dots and exploring novel ways to use them in the implementation of autonomous learning machines.

Alumni

Dr. Jonas Schuff -PhD Student (2021-2024) Current position: Research Scientist at Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon

Dr. Vincent Michal - Postdoctoral Researcher (2023-2024) Current position: Assistant Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen

Dr. Barnaby Van Straaten - PhD Student (2020-2024) Current position: Postdoctoral Researcher at TU Delft

Dr. Brandon Severin - PhD Student (2020-2024) Current position: CEO/Co-Founder at Conductor Quantum

Dr. Kushagra Aggarwal - PhD Student (2020-2023) Current position: Postdoctoral Researcher at Cornell University

Dr. Sebastian Orbell - PhD Student (2020-2024) Current position: Research Scientist at Quantum Motion

Dr. David Craig - PhD Student (2020-2024) Current position: Research Scientist at QuantrolOx

Dr. Florian Vigneau - Postdoctoral Researcher (2019-2021) Current position: Senior Quantum Hardware Engineer at IQM

Dr. Anna Pearson - PhD Student (2016-2020) Current position: Lead Manager R&D (Research Scientist) at Quantinuum

Dr. Dominic Lennon - PhD Student (2017-2021) Current position: Cofounder and Direct of Product at Quantrol Ox

Dr. Hyungil Moon - Postdoctoral Researcher (2017-2021) Current position: Quantitative Strategist at Deutsche Bank

Dr. Vu Nguyen - Postdoctoral Researcher (2019-2020) Current position: Senior Machine Learning Scientist at Amazon Australia