Supratik Guha is Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago and holds a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory (2015 to present). He is one of the few scientists who has held senior executive positions in industrial R&D, in the U.S. National Laboratory system, and as a tenured professor at a leading research university. At Argonne, he has been Director of the Nanoscale Science and Technology Division and Science Advisor to the Director of Argonne. In this latter position he ran Argonne’s overall science strategy during 2018-2019. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at the Argonne led Q-NEXT: one of the five Department of Energy National Quantum Information Centers. His research interests are in the discovery science of new materials and devices for future information processing. Supratik was named a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2015 for his contributions to field effect transistor technology. He is also currently a Department of Defense Vannevar Bush Fellow.
From 2010 to 2015, Supratik was the Director of Physical Sciences at IBM Research, leading a team of over 250 researchers who were distributed across IBM’s worldwide laboratories and engaged in fundamental and applied science research. As a scientist, Guha initiated and then led IBM’s research in high dielectric constant (high-k)-metal gate transistor technology between 1998-2011. Today, the materials introduced by him can be found in the processors of the majority of smart phone products, as well as in IBM servers. While at IBM he championed IBM’s quantum computer on the cloud model, and was the first professional manager to put together a multidisciplinary engineering team for an integrated design of a quantum processor. As a manager he was also responsible for initiating and overseeing IBM’s silicon photonics and IoT based geospatial technology research activities, both of which led to successful product impact.
After joining the University of Chicago and Argonne, he drove Argonne's strategy in quantum information sciences and helped expand the program to where it is now one of Argonne's key strategic initiatives. He has also played an active role in championing national quantum information strategy and testified in front of Senate and Congressional sub-committees: these hearings played a role in the formation of DOE’s National Quantum Information Centers. His own research efforts are in the areas of quantum information technologies and in geospatial sensor networks and sensors for agriculture and water: topics apparently disparate, but both related to future information processing systems. In quantum, the efforts of his research group are in discovering new materials, devices, and atom scale nanofabrication processes for silicon compatible chip scale, integrated solid state quantum memories. He is co-PI of the Materials and Integration Thrust within Q-NEXT in this regard. His work on geospatial sensing systems includes the development and pilot scale evaluation of fully buried wireless underground sensor networks/sensors for agriculture; and mobile sensing platform-based mapping of water quality in rivers (thoreau.uchicago.edu). He is a co-PI at AIFARMS, the first national center for artificial intelligence applications for agriculture (USDA and NSF). A strong champion for multidisciplinary engineering research, which he believes academia needs to strongly engage in, Supratik works closely with electrical engineers, soil scientists, agronomists, computer scientists, economists and physical scientists on his various research activities.
Supratik received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Southern California in 1991, and his B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (India) in 1985. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society. He was awarded the IBM Corporate Award in 2013 (IBM’s highest technical award) by IBM’s CEO. He received the American Physical Society (APS) 2015 Prize for the Industrial Applications of Physics. His recent research has been funded by the DOE, DoD (ONR), NSF, USDA, and the Tata Center for Development.
Koichi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Koichi received his PhD from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2020 for his work on growing transition metal carbide thin films on 2D materials. He also received major awards including the Outstanding PhD Student Award (UCLA/MSE). Before UCLA, he worked at Mitsubishi Materials Corporation in Japan. Koichi's current research interests include thin film growth, heterolayered and multilayered materials, materials characterization, and instrumentation of high and ultra-high vacuum systems.
Alex earned her PhD at Michigan State University in 2020 where she developed novel hydrogeophysical modeling techniques to study root water uptake processes. She began a postdoc at the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago in March 2021 to collaborate with ANL and UIUC on the NSF-funded AIFarms project. Her research integrates soil hydrological and biogeochemical data with process-based and machine-learning models to understand what drives water fluxes and nutrient transport at field-scales.
Brian is from the Bay Area and obtained his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at University of California, Berkeley in 2016. There, he worked with Prof. Ana Claudia Arias on developing processing techniques for manufacturing mechanically compliant Li-ion pouch cells. After completing his undergraduate degree, he spent 5 years at Georgia Tech working with Prof. Elsa Reichmanis on probing the mixed ion-electronic conduction behavior of conjugated polythiophenes functionalized with pendant ion groups, obtaining his doctoral degree in 2021. For his postdoctoral work, Brian splits his time between UChicago and Argonne National Lab to develop an a photonic-based sensor platform for real-time monitoring of micronutrients in soil and wastewater.
Swarnabha received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at University of Southern California in 2021, where he worked on a novel class of all-dielectric Mie resonant nanophotonic metastructures and a new class of QD single photon sources towards scalable quantum photonic circuits. As of 2022, he is now a postdoctoral appointee at Argonne National Laboratory. His current research focus includes electronic structure calculations, light-matter interaction of rare earth emitters, and defects in solids for classical and quantum memory applications, quantum networks, and quantum computation.
Srinivas contributes to the Thoreau's soil sensing project, and is currently assisting the development and testing of high-performance low-cost wireless underground sensor networking systems and estimation of soil characteristics using radio signal strength. Srinivasa earned his PhD at Andhra University in India before joining the Water-to-Cloud initiative as a research lead. He then joined UChicago as a postdoc and Argonne National Lab as a resident scientist, where he now studies soil sensing and quality monitoring.
Gregory graduated from the University of Chicago College as a Physics major in June 2018. He subsequently joined the Guha Group as a PhD candidiate at the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. His interests lie in solid-state quantum memory and wireless sensor network technologies.
Xella graduated from Cornell University in 2019 with a B.S. in Engineering Physics. In 2020, she started at the University of Chicago as a PhD candidate at the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering.
Connor joined the Guha group in 2020 as a PhD student in the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering. He previously completed a degree in Engineering Physics from Cornell University, where he did research on a variety of condensed matter systems. As a PhD student he is primarily interested in fabricating nanoscale devices with a particular focus towards quantum engineering.
Sagar graduated from IIT Bombay with a Bachelor's in Engineering Physics and a Masters in Nanotechnology. In 2021, he started his studies as a PhD candidate at the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago.
Ignas graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 2021 with bachelor's degrees in Physics and Astronomy. In 2021, he joined the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering cohort as a PhD candidate in Quantum Engineering. He is jointly advised by Professor Supratik Guha and Professor David Awschalom.
Yulin is a PhD candidate from Wuhan University. In 2018, he exchanged to Argonne National Lab, where he now works with Dr. Jianguo Wen on low-dose TEM characterization for beam sensitive materials. He joined the Guha Group in 2021 as a research specialist.
Rishi is an undergraduate at UChicago studying quantum molecular engineering and business economics. He is currently working on the characterization and analysis of rare-earth doped thin films for the quantum memory project. His interests include quantum optics, quantum materials, and the commercialization of novel quantum technologies.
Linus is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago studying molecular engineering. He is currently working of the Thoreau project. His research interests include conservation, sustainability, and energy.
Emilio is an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago studying Molecular Engineering. He is currently working on the "Jaws of Death" project in collaboration with the Basu Lab. His research interests include nanoscale fabrication and immunoengineering.
Marianna is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago double majoring in physics and mathematics. She is interested in employing her physics and math background in an interdisciplinary way to problem-solve and achieve promising applications. She has research interests that intersect the fields of materials science and engineering (especially nanotechnology), quantum science, and electronics.
Brian is an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago studying physics, mathematics, and economics. He is currently working on simulations for the near-field deposition project. His research interests include materials science and quantum information and computing.
Collaborators
memQ
memQ is a quantum internet startup founded in part by lab alumnus Manish Singh.
Dr. Oni Basu
Oni is a professor of genetic medicine and the head of the Basu Group at the University of Chicago, studying microfluidics and RNA sequencing.
Dr. David Awschalom
David is a professor of molecular engineering and the head of the Awschalom Group at the University of Chicago studying solid-state quantum information, sensing, and communication.
Dr. Gary Wolfowicz
Gary is a staff scientist working in the Awschalom Group at the University of Chicago studying quantum communication.
Dr. Alan Dibos
Alan is a scientist at Argonne National Lab specializing in nanofabrication and cryogenic measurement of low-dimensional optical nanostructures.
Dr. Subramanian Sankaranarayanan
Subramanian is a scientist at Argonne National Lab studying machine learning, multiscale modeling, and molecular dynamics.
Dr. Suman Datta
Suman is a professor of nanotechnology at Notre Dame and head of the NDC lab, studying a variety of advances in computing.
Dr. Roser Matamala
Roser is a scientist at Argonne National Lab studying terrestrial ecology, and is the head of the Matamala Group.
Dr. Jianguo Wen
Jianguo is a scientist at Argonne National Lab studying the development and application of electron microscopy techniques for materials science problems.
Dr. Ilke Arslan
Ilke is a division director scientist at Argonne National Lab studying electron and x-ray microscopy.