Mike Wasielewski, the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, has been awarded with the 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Faraday Lectureship Prize. He is being recognized “for contributions toward understanding electron spin dynamics in molecular systems for applications in quantum information science.”
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) writes:
Quantum information science (QIS) promises breathtaking advances in computing, sensing applications and communications. These advances depend on harnessing the unique properties of matter on the atomic scale. For example, Professor Wasielewski’s research focuses on electrons within molecules that have a property called spin. When observing the spin of an electron, only one of two possible values result, much like the on-off switches (bits) representing 0 or 1 in today’s computers. But when electrons are not observed, many of them (quantum bits or qubits) can interact to utilise any value between 0 and 1, therefore greatly expanding their ability to carry out computations.
The Wasielewski research group also focuses on connecting these systems on the molecular length scale without losing the important quantum properties of the resulting system. Molecular synthesis affords the opportunity to build novel molecular materials for QIS from the bottom up.
Wasielewski is also Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern, and Director of the Center for Molecular Quantum Transduction, a US-DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. His research has resulted in over 700 publications and focuses on light-driven processes in molecules and materials, artificial photosynthesis, molecular electronics, quantum information science, ultrafast optical spectroscopy, and time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy.