Romain Debroux

  • Winton Scholar
  • Supervisor: Professor Mete Atature
  • Atomic, Mesoscopic and Optical Physics Group
Romain Debroux

Contact

About

I started my undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech passionate about math and science (B.S. Math '16), but was unsure how to best use this passion to impact society. After interning in fluid dynamics lab, working at Boeing as an electromagnetics engineer, and pursuing research in nanoscience (M.S. Electrical Engineering '18), I became aware of the potential of quantum computing to radically change society, and instantly was drawn to this field. I spent last summer working at IonQ, a quantum computing start-up. Having seen the state of industry first hand, I am now ready to return to academia and contribute to the development of quantum computing from my PhD lab. Outside of lab, I am interested in science/technology policy, specifically how technologies such as quantum computing should be implemented into society.

Research

Many quantum technologies (such as quantum computing) rely on networks of nodes containing quantum information connected with one another. My research is aimed at establishing color centers in diamond as a strong candidate to realize quantum networks. Initially, I will show that quantum information stored in color centers can be initialized, controlled, and read-out with high fidelity. This will be done by (1) exploring new color centers and (2) engineering existing the strain and nuclear spin environment of existing color centers. As a long term goal, I will investigate how distant color centers can be entangled via photons thus realizing a quantum network.