This Seeding Excellence Initiative of the UI OVPR office aims to helps tenure-track assistant professors to develop a competitive proposal to seek external funding. It is our pleasure to be a part of such a diverse and dynamic group of early-career scholars from across the University selected for this award. In this project, we aim to harness the power of quantum physics to improve the sensitivity of spectroscopic measurements.

Aden Hageman wins the poster prize at the Fall Undergraduate Research Festival for his poster title "Telecom-band single-photon sources" in which he discusses our new research on quantum dots emitting at telecom wavelengths (~1400 - 1500 nm) that could enable long-distance quantum communication. This work is being carried out in collaboration with Prof. John Prineas and Prof. Craig Pryor in our department.

Aden Hageman and Joseph Schopen presented posters at the Fall Undergraduate Research Festival discussing the summer projects that they carried out in our group as part of the UI Quantum Technology Summer School.

Hank (Henry Hammer) wins a poster prize at the Fall Undergraduate Research Festival (FURF) for his summer research project on wavefront shaping!

Himani Saraswat joins as a Research Assistant (supervised together with Prof. Thomas Folland) on the UI-QSim Jumpstarting Tomorrow program.

The first cryostat arrives (Montana Instruments Cryocore) albeit with a pallet missing (arrived safely later).

With help from Hank during his summer project and Christopher from the Physics workshop, the lab organization is nearly complete. We even have a small dedicated space for quick electronic work (thanks in part to the great component collection of Prof. Paul Kleiber's group).

The first setup is now ready, built, and tested by Hank.