Lab members
PI: Angela Kou
Angela Kou is an experimental physicist specializing in superconducting circuits and topological materials. She did her graduate work at Harvard University on microscopic effects of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Angela’s postdoctoral research at Yale University was focused on superconducting qubits, and particularly on the fluxonium. Angela then worked as a senior researcher in the Microsoft Quantum Lab at Delft where she supervised the circuit QED group.
Angela is currently an assistant professor in the UIUC physics department and a member of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST) and the Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE).
Contact: akou@illinois
Postdocs
Zhanzhi Jiang
Zhanzhi is from China, where he earned his bachelor's degree at Peking University. He then pursued his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Texas at Austin. His doctoral research concentrated on developing low-temperature scanning microwave impedance microscopy. In his free time, Zhanzhi enjoys watching TV series, reading, and writing classic Chinese poems.
Zhanzhi joined the lab in September 2023 as an IQUIST Postdoctoral fellow and is building a scanning resonator sensor for imaging quantum materials and qubits.
Graduate students
Randy Owen
Randy graduated with degrees in math and physics from Binghamton University in 2020. His undergraduate research focused on material characterization and physical metallurgy. Randy enjoys going to the gym, playing video games, and being active in physics outreach.
Randy joined the lab in July 2020 and is building hybrid superconducting circuits.
Cheeranjeev Purmessur
Cheeranjeev is from the island of Mauritius and attended Colgate University. He graduated in 2020 with a major in Physics and a minor in Computer Science. In his previous research, he developed superconducting circuits for neuromorphic computing. Cheeranjeev enjoys traveling, playing soccer, and eating good food.
Cheeranjeev joined the lab in January 2022 and his current research focuses on developing high kinetic inductance elements for use in superconducting qubits.
Aayam Bista
Aayam is from Nepal and did his undergraduate at Colgate University. He is interested in quantum physics and quantum information. Outside of physics, Aayam likes playing soccer, reading, and watching movies.
Aayam joined the lab in September 2020 and his current research is on quantum simulation with superconducting circuits.
Ke Nie
Ke is from China and has a Russian cat named Ivy. She graduated from Cornell University in 2021 with a major in Physics. Sick of climbing up the hills in Ithaca during winter, Ke loves the flat landscape of Illinois, but resents the winter here equivalently.
Ke joined the lab in September 2022 and is now working on remote entanglement using fluxonium qubits.
Jared Gibson
Raised in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, Jared is no stranger to the Midwest. He has many interests, but physics and rock-climbing are his current favorites. Jared graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Physics.
Jared joined the lab in June 2021 and is building a scanning resonator sensor to measure local properties of novel materials.
The group during a training session
Group Photos
The group slaying a monster on their way to work