Prof. Brian DeMarco
Brian DeMarco
Principal Investigator
About the PI
Brian DeMarco has worked on experiments with ultracold atom gases for more than 20 years. Brian did his undergraduate degree in Physics at SUNY Geneseo, where he worked on experiments with low-energy fusion. That first taste of research was enough to ignite his interest in experimental physics for life, and in 1996 Brian left NY for Boulder, Colorado to pursue a PhD in physics. He originally started as a research assistant for Eric Cornell at JILA, switching to work with Deborah Jin in 1997. Together, Debbie and Brian produced the first Fermi gas of atoms. Brian defended his dissertation in 2001, and went down the road to NIST in Boulder to work with David Wineland on trapped ion quantum computing experiments. In August 2003, Brian left mountainous Boulder, Colorado to join the faculty of the Physics department at the University of Illinois.
Brian currently serves on a number of national committees, including the APS Panel On Public Affairs and as the Chair of the NASA Fundamental Science Standing Review Board. Brian was also a member of the 2016-2018 Defense Sciences Study Group class. He is currently the Associate Head for Undergraduate Programs in Physics at the University of Illinois.
A copy of Brian's CV with full listing of publications and awards can be found here.
You can listen to his appearance on Car Talk at this link.
Brian runs a Science Night at Leal Elementary. You can learn more here.
Current Group Members
Philip Russ
Graduate Student Research Assistant.
Laura Wadleigh
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Pei-Wen Tsai
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Nick Kowalski
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Nathan Fredman
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Past Group Members
Wenchao Xu
Former Ph.D. student. Currently a post-doc in Vuletic's group at MIT.
William Morong
Former Ph.D. student. Currently a post-doc in Chris Monroe's group at UMD.
Angela Printzis
Former undergraduate Student Research Assistant. Currently in graduate school at San Franscisco State University.
Carolyn Meldgin
Former Ph.D. student. Now a Senior Quantitative Analyst at Pacific Gas and Electric.
David Chen
Former Ph.D. student. Now a postdoc at the Max Planck of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics.
William McGehee
Former Ph.D. student. Now an NRC post-doc at NIST.
Dr. David McKay
Former Ph.D. student. Now a Research Staff Member in the Experimental Quantum Computing group at IBM's Yorktown facility.
Dr. Stanimir Kondov
Former Ph.D. student. Now a post-doctoral researcher with Tanya Zelevinsky's group at Columbia University.
Dr. Matthew Pasienski
Former Ph.D. student. Now Director of Product and Co-founder of Wizeline.
Dr. Joshua Zirbel
Former post-doc. Currently senior staff at TDK and founder of Entangleware.
Paul Koehring
Former undergraduate research assistant and technician. Working for TradeLink.
Cecilia Borries
Former undergraduate research assistant. Obtained a Master's Degree in Atmospheric Sciences, and is now an Educator at the Alaska Challenger Learning Center.
Matthew Grau
Fomer undergraduate research assistant. Obtained a Ph.D. in Physics and is now a post-doc in the trapped ion quantum information group at ETHZ.
Lauren Aycock
Former undergraduate research assistant. Obtained a Ph.D. in Physics, and is currently an APS Congressional Fellow in Senator Durbin's office.
Dr. Matthew White
Former Ph.D. student. Founder of StylusLabs. Currently an engineer at Airbnb.
Dr. Hong Gao
Former post-doc. Now supervises his own group at Xian Jiaotong University