Juliet Gopinath
Faculty Spotlight
Juliet Gopinath:Associate Director, bit Quantum Initiative; Associate Professor of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Science; Associate Professor of Physics; Fellow, Materials Science and Engineering
Juliet Gopinath joined Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) in 2009. Prior to taking the role of associate director of the bit Quantum Initiative, Gopinath led a collaborative quantum research effort within CEAS, making valuable connections between departments at the college, university level partners and outside institutions.
Gopinath is currently part of two collaborative seed grants that were awarded through bit to foster work and partnerships in quantum information science. One examines methods to make entangled frequency combs in a compact and tunable manner, while the other focuses on generating truly random numbers in a small form factor.
Research interests and Gopinath’s Optics and Photonics Research Group
Gopinath leads an experimentally focused optics group centered around lasers and optical devices. Current research projects include adaptive optics, mid-infrared lasers and materials, the generation and detection of orbital angular momentum of light, spectroscopy of materials, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems, and pulsed and continuous wave sources in spectral regions where lasers suffer from fundamental physical constraints.
Applications of the technology include sensors, communications, LIDAR, medical imaging and surgery, environmental monitoring and quantum information science. The group’s research is interdisciplinary, spanning electrical engineering, physics and materials science.
Education
Gopinath earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota, and her master’s degree and doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Quotable and notable
Gopinath is the principal investigator on a $1 million multi-university, multi-disciplinary National Science Foundation project that seeks to foster collaboration in quantum research. The proposal focuses on the ability to share information through photonic integrated circuits, which encode information on light, rather than electricity. It aims to create a single photonic integrated circuit chip for quantum information processing. Such a chip would allow secure quantum networking and quantum computing, replacing the binary zeros and ones of conventional computing with multivariable quantum bits. Practical applications include significantly improved data encryption for personal privacy.
“Juliet is bringing together engineering and science to help reinforce Boulder as a major hub in quantum,” said Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation Terri Fiez. “The bit Quantum Initiative underscores the collaboration between our engineers and scientists that is so critical in translating fundamental quantum discoveries into transformative applications.”