Members

The guy mainly in charge of Japanese paperwork. More details about this person can be found here.

Born and bred in Ethiopia, I did my undergrad at Imperial College London. I then went to Brighton's University of Sussex to complete my PhD in Matthias Keller's group, working on trapped ions in optical cavities. I later joined Axel Kuhn's Atom-Photon Connection group in Oxford to comprehend life as a neutral-atom guy, look into fancy cavities and ended up learning about even fancier photons. I was getting rekindled with long-lived emitters after teaming up with Joe Goodwin in David Lucas's Ion Trap Quantum Computing group before I was seduced by a shisa chanting Sanshin folk in the fall of 2019.     

I did my undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Following my master’s degree studies at IISER Kolkata I set off to the US for my PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, carrying out experimental studies of collective effects in spontaneous emission rates in cold atoms. I joined the Professor Takahashi’s group at OIST after a year of Postdoctoral work at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Shaobo did his undergraduates and master's in National University of Defense Technology majoring in physics. He then tried his luck in UK for his PhD and managed to finish two projects in Oxford University. The first projects is quantum memories in atomic ensemble in Ian Walmsley's group while the second one is to integrate optical micro-cavity with ion trap in David Lucas's group. After graduation, with some general curiosity towards nature and humanity, he lived like a nomad in Southwest Chinese mountains for more than a year. He then decided to return to modern civilization and academia in fall 2022.

Dr Kavungal completed his master’s from Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in India and then moved to Technological University Dublin in Ireland to do his PhD. Since April 2022, he has worked as a postdoc at OIST, first in Light-Matter Interaction for Quantum Technologies Unit (LMI-QT) and then in EQuIP unit. During his PhD, his research was mainly about optical fibre-based whispering gallery mode (WGM) microresonators for sensing applications. The main aim of the research was to investigate and address several key aspects related to developing novel sensors and tunable devices based on cylindrical WGM micro-resonators to move such structures closer to practical applications. In EQuIP unit, Dr Kavungal is involved in the research and development of high-finesse optical cavities for Ion trap experiments.

Aojie Xu obtained his master's degree in optics from Harbin Engineering University, China. He subsequently pursued his PhD in quantum physics at the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan. His research primarily focuses on the generation of spectrally uncorrelated heralded single-photon sources through spontaneous parametric down-conversion, and the realization of independent two-photon interference using Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry. In pursuit of advancing quantum computing technology, he recently joined the ion trap group in Takahashi Hiroki's Unit at OIST (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology), where he is actively engaged in conducting quantum experiments.

From the land of good food and "truly asia" - Malaysia, Soon obtained his bachelor degree in physics from University of Malaya, Malaysia. Soon's undergraduate dissertation investigate the properties of gold clusters by means of density-functional based tight-binding theory. Upon graduation, he spent some time at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan where he studied the spectroscopic and H-bond properties of methanol. Soon (pun intended), realized his calling in quantum information, is joining the unit as a PhD student.

Co-supervised by Dr. Yuimaru Kubo

Tatsuki was born and grew up in Okinawa, Japan. He received his M.S. degree from the Grad. School of Frontier BioSciences, Osaka Univ. He spent six years dealing with E. coli and neurons in Osaka. Spins in a diamond and ions do not die, so you can experiment as much as you want. This fact changed his field of research from biology to quantum information. Tatsuki will research quantum transducers.

Co-supervised by Dr. Yuimaru Kubo

He was born in Nago City, Okinawa. After graduating from Nago High School, he studied physics at the University of the Ryukyus. He engaged in research about complex systems and got a master's degree at the end of March 2020. During his graduate studies, he worked as a research assistant in the Quantum Dynamics Unit (supervisor: Prof. Denis Konstantinov) at OIST. He is currently working on research of thermal maser with Dr. Kubo (Science and Technology Associate in OIST).
He has never lived outside of Okinawa before. He is proud to be the most local student in this global graduate school.

Zhenghan is a PhD student in EQuIP unit. Zhenghan did his undergrad in University College London majoring in straight physics and his master in Imperial College London majoring in physics with quantum dynamics. During then, he gained his interest on ion trap quantum computing and started considering photonic interconnect as the future of human being. After one-year competition with quantum hackers by quantum key distribution in University of Hong Kong, he finally joined EQuIP unit as an ion trapper. 

Shuma was born in Tokyo and earned his undergraduate and master's degrees from Keio University. While there, he worked on creating air-suspended carbon nanotubes with a defect state to trap an exciton for use as room-temperature single photon sources. Fascinated by the field of ion trap quantum computers, where you can sit right next to the pure quantum world and actually work together with the cute tiny ions, he flew to Okinawa to join EQuIP.

Having had a long-lasting love for applied sciences (especially everything related to CAD/CAM/CAE, engineering and manufacturing), I did my undergrad at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. Halfway through my undergrad I got sidetracked and found new interests in gas dynamics and thermal physics. As a result, my thesis research concerned the physical characterization of a plasma plume made by laser keyhole welding. I later joined the Nonlinear Optics of Condensed Media Laboratory at ITMO University in hopes of gaining experience in experimental physics. There I worked on microparticle loading into linear electrodynamic quadrupole traps, as well as simulation and analysis of particle dynamics of localized ions. Pursuing my dream of working on the development of a trapped-ion quantum computer, I joined Prof. Takahashi's unit, where I will be studying cavity QED of Barium ions. When not in the lab, I can be found enjoying the ocean and hiking the (few and small) peaks of Okinawa.

Co-supervised by Dr. Yuimaru Kubo

Mathieu completed an MSc at Concordia University in Montreal studying optical whispering gallery mode resonators. Using these resonances, he developed a precise method to characterize optical fibers and, as a second project developed an optical gyroscope for autonomous vehicles. For his PhD he is working with nitrogen vacancy center ensembles in diamonds for quantum devices. He is trying to extend the coherence time of these ensembles and also develop a quantum memory capable of storing single photons at microwave frequencies.

I received my PhD in Engineering from Ibaraki University (Japan), 2013. I am interested in a variety of fields, mostly centered around condensed matter physics and materials science –in particular: heteroepitaxial growth, surface/interface structure, quantum beam science and semiconductor research. I am also interested in quantum computer science! I am interested to know more about the various experimental techniques that will help with studies and development of Trapped ion quantum computer. In my free time, I enjoy catching a game of football and having meaningful conversations with my friends over a few drinks, though I also enjoy reading and skiing.

I have experienced a few careers. Now I am glad to be a member in EQuIP Unit, OIST, writing some software to control some hardware as experiment instrument. I like it so much. In my leisure time, I like cooking, and hiking.

I was born and raised in Naha. After completing my undergraduate and graduate studies in Tokyo, I worked as a researcher in Tsukuba for about five years. Now, I am happy to be back in Okinawa and extremely excited to be a member of such a fascinating research unit: EQuIP. I look forward to contributing to the development of our research.

I was born and raised in Okinawa, had university life in Tokyo, and joined OIST in 2024 after spending a few years in Canada.
Coming from a non-scientific background, joining OIST was a big challenge for me, but I enjoy helping members achieve their scientific goals from an administrative perspective.