APS quantum computing prize awarded to female scientist for the first time

Recently, the American Physical Society's (APS) Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Prize in Quantum Computing was awarded to Nathalie de Leon - the first time the prize has been given to a woman scientist [1].

Quantum scientists from Princeton University

The award speech stated that Nathalie de Leon [2] was recognized for "significant contributions to the field of experimental quantum information science, with a focus on materials discovery and enhancement, and the use of materials to improve the coherence of a broad range of physical platforms for quantum computing, sensing, and communication."

Nathalie de Leon received her B.S. from Stanford University in 2004 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2011. She then served as a Center for Integrated Quantum Materials (CIQM) and Element Six Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. nathalie joined Princeton University in 2016 as an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and was later promoted to Associate Professor. She is currently the Materials Propulsion Lead for the Joint Design Center for Quantum Advantage at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Center for Quantum Information Science.

Nathalie's research focuses on quantum technologies for building solid-state defects in diamond and other wide bandgap materials, as well as new material systems for superconducting quantum bits. Her team works in quantum optics, atomic physics, condensed matter and device physics, materials science, surface spectroscopy, nanofabrication, and spin physics to uncover sources of noise and loss in quantum systems and use these insights to design new quantum platforms.Nathalie received the U.S. Air Force Science Research Young Investigator Award in 2016, the 2017 Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, the 2018 NSF Career Award, 2018 DARPA Young Faculty Award, and 2018 U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award.

About the Landauer-Bennett Award

Established in 2015 by the APS Quantum Information Theme Group and endowed in part by IBM, the Landauer-Bennett Prize recognizes outstanding quantum computing research conducted by scientists within 12 years of their PhD over the past 10 years, with a focus on exceptional work that has advanced the theoretical understanding and the state of the art in quantum information processing; it also honors Landauer and Bennett's groundbreaking work on fundamental discoveries at the interface between information and physics.

In the short seven-year history of the prize, 2021 and 2022 have been awarded consecutively by Chinese individuals, Professor Lu Chaoyang of the University of Science and Technology of China and Professor Jiang Liang of the University of Chicago, respectively.

Left: Rolf Landauer; Right: Charles H. Bennett

Rolf Landauer has made many contributions to the understanding of the relationship between thermodynamics and information, most notably Landauer's principle that the minimum energy required to erase a bit is kT ln(2).

Bennett, one of the founders of the field of quantum information and computing and an APS fellow, "invented reversible computing, analyzed Maxwell's laws, and co-invented quantum ciphers and quantum invisible transitions." Bennett's work has helped establish quantum information science as a coherent discipline that illuminates other areas of physics and has important practical applications.

Reference link：

[1]https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/landauer-bennet.cfm

[2]https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/prizerecipient.cfm?last_nm=De%20Leon&first_nm=Nathalie&year=2023