Congratulations to our graduates!

17 students from the CQT PhD programme were graduated on 29 June in a virtual ceremony. They now bring their expertise into new roles in research and industry, in Singapore and abroad. Mortarboards image: SpicyTruffel/Shutterstock.com

Warmest congratulations to our graduates! 17 students from the CQT PhD programme were graduated on 29 June in a virtual ceremony. It was the National University of Singapore’s first ever virtual Commencement, and included students who saw their Commencements postponed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

CQT Director José Ignacio Latorre says, “Our graduates have had to come to grips with the pandemic while doing science at a high level. It is inspiring to see them complete their education and find roles where they can make their knowledge useful to society.”

In a speech to all graduating students, NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye says, “I am especially proud of how our cohort of 2020 and 2021 have shown resolve, adaptability, and an unwavering commitment to excellence during this difficult period. Many of you have had to make major adjustments to your plans and career pathways… I would urge that you nurture a new mindset, and be prepared to chart new paths, and move boldly to seize emerging opportunities.”

The 17 graduates have contributed across a diverse range of projects in CQT’s research programme, from testing made-in-Singapore quantum technologies in space to building a gravimeter from scratch. While working on their theses, they also co-authored research publications. They now bring their expertise into new roles in research and industry, in Singapore and abroad.

Some graduates are contributing to the local quantum ecosystem. Aitor Villar Zafra, for example, joined the CQT spin-off company SpeQtral where he is continuing his work on quantum communications in space. Alessandro Landra, Francesca Tosto and Hermanni Heimonen have gone abroad, joining IQM, a startup based in Finland building quantum computing hardware. Other graduates like Jaren Gan Huat Chai and Oon Fong Eng have chosen to stay at CQT as postdoctoral fellows, continuing work on trapped ion quantum computing and development of a gravimeter, respectively. CQT graduates sometimes also take their technical skills into new industries: See Tian Feng, for example, has gone from researching light-matter systems to manufacturing memory chips at multinational company Micron.

We wish our graduates all the best!

Prospective students interested in pursuing a PhD at CQT can find more information on our website.

Find a full list of this year's graduates and their thesis titles below. To read the theses, go here.

PhD Graduates, 2020 and 2021

Aitor Villar Zafra
Building Entangled Photon Pair Sources for Quantum Key Distribution with Nano-satellites
Supervised by Alexander Ling
CQT PhD Programme

Alessandro Landra
An Experimental Platform for Hybridization of Atomic and Superconducting Quantum Systems
Supervised by Rainer Dumke
CQT PhD Programme

Chai Jing Hao
Assessing Fault-tolerance Conditions for Surface Code Implemented with Noisy Devices
Supervised by Berge Englert
CQT PhD Programme

Francesca Tosto
On-demand Atomtronic Architectures on a Superconducting Atom Chip
Supervised by Rainer Dumke
CQT PhD Programme

Hermanni Juuso Elias Heimonen
Synchronisation in Atomic and Quantum Systems
Supervised by Kwek Leong Chuan
CQT PhD Programme

Jaren Gan Huat Chai
Continuous Variables Quantum Information Processing with Trapped Ions
Supervised by Dzmitry Matsukevich
CQT PhD Programme

Lee Jianwei
Randomness Extraction and Clock Synchronization with Continuous Parametric Down-conversion
Supervised by Christian Kurtsiefer
CQT PhD Programme

Maharshi Ray
On Some Optimisation Problems Arising from Quantum Computing
Supervised by Miklos Santha
CQT PhD Programme

Mathias Alexander Seidler
Atom-photon Interaction with Photon Pairs of Long Coherence Time
Supervised by Christian Kurtsiefer
CQT PhD Programme

Oon Fong Eng
A Transportable High-precision Absolute Atomic Gravimeter
Supervised by Rainer Dumke
CQT PhD Programme

Rattakorn Kaewuam
Development of an Optical Atomic Clock Based on Trapped Lutetium Ions
Supervised by Murray Barrett
CQT PhD Programme

Seah Yi-Lin
Detecting Prior-data Conflict in Quantum State Estimation
Supervised by Berge Englert
CQT PhD Programme

See Tian Feng
Few-photon Transport In Strongly Interacting Light-matter Systems: A Scattering Approach
Supervised by Dimitris Angelakis
CQT PhD Programme

Sim Jun Yan
Error Regions for Self-calibrating Quantum Tomography and Sampling of Quantum Channels
Supervised by Berge Englert
CQT PhD Programme

Tobias Florian Haug
Quantum Transport with Cold Atoms
Supervised by Kwek Leong Chuan
CQT PhD Programme

Ulrike Bornheimer
Topological Properties of the Spin-1 Bose Gas in the Honeycomb Lattice
Supervised by Berge Englert
CQT PhD Programme

Zhang Zhiqiang
Collective Interaction of Atoms and Light with Cavity-assisted Raman Transitions
Supervised by Murray Barrett
CQT PhD Programme