Meet the Team
Get to know our group members and their research interests
University of Victoria
Dr. de Sousa focuses on the properties of materials and their application to quantum computing, sensing, and communication hardware. He led a series of works that discovered novel optical resonances and electrooptical control of magnetism in BiFeO3, one of the strongest ferroelectrics in nature. His group elucidated the origin of noise in superconducting-based Quantum Computers, and discovered a new mechanism of photon loss at their interface. de Sousa’s group developed a theory of photon squeezing in phonon-mediated Raman scattering. With a strong track record in collaborating with experimentalists, de Sousa leads the consortium and supervises the development of theories of entanglement generation and optical loss in photonic chips.
University of British Columbia
Dr. Chrostowski is a distinguished researcher in the field of silicon photonics, optoelectronics, and high-speed laser design. His work spans applications in optical communications, biophotonics, and quantum photonics. Dr. Chrostowski served as the co-director of the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory (AMPEL) Nanofabrication Facility. His extensive experience in leading national graduate training programs includes serving as the Program Director for the NSERC CREATE Silicon Electronic-Photonic Integrated Circuits (Si-EPIC) training program (2012-2018) and currently as the Program Director for the NSERC CREATE Quantum Computing program (2020-2026, Quantum BC). In addition to his leadership roles, Dr. Chrostowski co-leads the Quantum Silicon Photonics design-fabricate-test workshop, offered to trainees involved in the consortium. He is also the co-founder of Dream Photonics Inc., a UBC spin-off that develops component and circuit libraries for silicon photonic integrated circuits and photonic wire bond packaging.
Genevieve is the Program Manager for the Consortium on Integrated Quantum Photonics with Ferroelectric Materials at the University of Victoria. With a strong background in administrative and research support from her previous role at the University of Calgary, Genevieve brings a wealth of experience in coordinating complex projects and fostering collaboration among academic and industry partners. Genevieve oversees the day-to-day operations of the consortium, ensuring that research initiatives are effectively managed and aligned with the consortium’s goals. She plays a key role in organizing events, managing communications, and supporting the recruitment of talented students and postdoctoral researchers.
Dr. Barclay leads a lab that develops quantum nanophotonic devices from a wide range of platforms, including diamond, silicon, gallium phosphide, and silicon nitride.
Dr. Barzanjeh was lead author in a pioneering experiment that demonstrated entanglement and squeezing of microwave radiation emitted by Si nanomechanical resonators, and published several papers on quantum sensing. He leads experiments that measure
nonclassical light generated by ferroelectric devices, and benchmarks the amount of noise squeezing that can be reached with the new technology.
Dr. Lau will study how exotic photonic states can help improve the successful rate of entanglement distribution, and how multi-photon entanglement can enhance the efficiency of entangling matter quantum units.
Dr. Lu designs and fabricates ultra-high Q optical resonators. His team showed that microdisks made with LNO on insulator contain polygon resonance modes that lead to frequency comb generation, and activate optomechanical oscillation and lasing. His ultra-high Q rib disks will be used by the consortium for frequency combs and entanglement generation.
Dr. Morandotti pioneered the demonstration of an integrated quantum source based on frequency combs, generating single/multi-photons, multidimensional entangled states, and multi-level cluster states, while developing a universal witness operator for entanglement detection. The device is ideal for multiplexed quantum optics applications: quantum computing and cryptography. His role in the consortium is to scale up his time/frequency-bin cluster state generator using Consortium-made devices.
Dr. Paci has several ground-breaking predictions of optical properties of materials, including solar cells and plasmonic devices. She leads a group that uses a variety of first-principle methods to predict properties of dielectric and ferroelectric materials. Her role is to perform ab-initio predictions of energy loss and nonlinearity generated by the materials and devices being tested by the consortium.
Dr. Van co-leads the project that integrates BTO and LNO in Si photonic chips, and leads the effort to incorporate ferroelectric devices into topological photonic circuits that greatly reduce loss.
Dr. Young’s research group developed a method to integrate superconducting single photon detectors to Si photonic chips. In the consortium he will lead an effort to integrate these photon detectors to the BTO/LNO process, and increase their timing jitter by an order of magnitude.
Dr. Zou is focused on using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to grow ferroelectric materials as thin films. For example, growing BaTiO₃ thin films using MBE allows for high-quality, epitaxial films with precise control over thickness, stoichiometry, and interface quality. Our research on BaTiO₃ thin films at UBC involves studying the growth mechanisms, optimizing film properties for specific applications within this consortium, and exploring novel heterostructures by integrating BaTiO₃ with other materials to enhance performance.