CQT welcomes new Principal Investigator and CQT Fellow

(From left) CQT Fellow Zhu Di's research aims to develop integrated quantum photonic devices while Principal Investigator Lam Ping Koy's research includes quantum information, metrology and communications.

CQT has welcomed new Principal Investigator Lam Ping Koy and CQT Fellow Zhu Di! Their appointments in October mean that there are currently 24 Principal Investigators and 7 CQT Fellows at the Centre. 

Both hold joint appointments at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). Ping Koy is A*STAR’s Chief Quantum Scientist while Di is a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. Di also a Presidential Young Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the National University of Singapore. 

Ping Koy is a renowned experimental physicist in quantum information and metrology, and has published close to 300 scientific articles. His research work includes quantum optical states generation, quantum teleportation, quantum encryption, quantum opto-mechanics, quantum levitation, optical metrology, and quantum communications. Ping Koy has spent three decades at the Australian National University (ANU) as a tenured Professor. In 2003 and 2006, he won Australian Eureka Prizes for his work in quantum teleportation and quantum encryption respectively. He is also the co-founder of QuintessenceLabs, an Australian company providing quantum cybersecurity. 

“I have been collaborating with CQT for over a decade while I was at ANU in Australia. I am honoured to finally join CQT as a PI. This will allow me to continue the collaborations with many of the CQT members. One of my research directions is to use laser light field to coherently levitate a macroscopic object. My group will use this opto-mechanical system to probe new physics and find new sensing applications,” says Ping Koy.

After finishing his undergraduate studies at the Nanyang Technological University, Di went on to earn his PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019 where he worked on superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. He returned to Singapore in 2021 after a postdoctoral stint at Harvard University. He received a Fellowship from the National Research Foundation (Class of 2023) for research on “Developing an integrated photonic platform for scalable quantum information processing”. This would allow single-photon generation, control and detection to be done on a single integrated chip. Di’s group brings expertise in nanofabrication, integrated photonics and applied superconductivity to CQT. He will set up a new lab at CQT. 

“My research aims to develop integrated photonic devices that can help us unlock novel functionalities and build scalable quantum systems,” says Di. “I’m excited to join CQT, a hub where quantum experts with diverse backgrounds converge. I look forward to fruitful discussions and collaborations with colleagues here.” 

Learn more about CQT’s new researchers at their group pages: 

• Lam Ping Koy Group
• Zhu Di Group