Group Leader

Andrew Daley
Andrew grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, where he completed his Masters degree in Physics in 2002. He received his PhD from the University of Innsbruck in 2005, working in the group of Peter Zoller, on simulation and manipulation of cold atoms in optical lattices. He held an assistant position at the University of Innsbruck and then a senior scientist position at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences until December 2010. In January 2011 he began a faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh, and in October 2013 he was appointed as a full professor at the University of Strathclyde. In his spare time he enjoys Music (including playing the trumpet and piano), theatre, travelling, and watching and participating in a variety of sports.

Office: JA 7.06 / phone: +44 141 548 4205 / e-mail: andrew.daley [at] strath.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Researchers

Rosaria Lena
Room JA 7.27 / e-mail: rosaria.lena [at] strath.ac.uk
Rosaria was born and raised in Palermo, in the south of Italy, where she did her undergrad and master, under the supervision of Massimo Palma and Gabriele De Chiara (Queen's University of Belfast). After spending 4 months in Belfast, she realised that she actually likes the weather up north and not having to deal with roasting summers, so she was happy to move to Glasgow for her PhD in the group of Andrew Daley, working on of neutral impurities in Bose-Einstein condensates in the context of Open Quantum Systems, and on the dynamics of trapped BECs. After completing her PhD in 2020, she stayed in the QOQMS group as a post-doc, enjoying anything that is non-Markovian and Open Quantum System related. In her spare time she enjoys music (listening to it and trying to play it), going to concerts, playing videogames and board games, reading books and listening to philosophy podcasts.
Gerard Pelegrí
Room JA 7.04 / e-mail: g.pelegri [at] strath.ac.uk
I was born and raised in Catalonia, Spain. In 2015 I completed my master's degree in physics in the University of Barcelona. I then moved to the nearby Autonomous University of Barcelona to start my PhD under the supervision of Verònica Ahufinger and Jordi Mompart. In my thesis, which I completed in 2020, I investigated the use of ultracold atoms carrying orbital angular momentum for applications on quantum sensing and quantum simulation. During my doctorate I had the pleasure to spend four months visiting the QOQMS group, which I have now joined to continue working on different aspects of quantum simulation and computation with atomic systems. In my free time I like to run, read and practice archery.
Callum Duncan
Room JA 7.04 / e-mail: callum.duncan [at] strath.ac.uk
Callum is from Livingston, between Edinburgh and Glasgow. He completed his undergraduate Masters degree in Physics at Heriot-Watt University in 2015. He stayed at Heriot-Watt University to obtain his PhD in 2019 under the supervision of Prof Patrik Öhberg and Dr Manuel Valiente. Callum then spent 8 months as a Postdoc in the group of Dr Anne Nielsen at MPIPKS in Dresden. His current work focuses on quasicrystalline systems, but his core focus is future applications of analog quantum simulations. In his spare time he enjoys spending time with his wonderful fiancée, relearning the guitar, reading history books, and playing video games. Homepage: Callum W. Duncan
Stuart Flannigan
Room JA 7.33 / e-mail: stuart.flannigan [at] strath.ac.uk
Stuart is from Helensburgh, a small town on the river Clyde not too far from Glasgow. He began his career studying towards an electrical engineering degree before changing paths and doing his undergraduate degree in Physics at the University of Strathclyde. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Andrew Daley and is currently working as a postdoc with the QOQMS group. In his free time he likes running, reading and the cinema.
Johannes Kombe
Room JA / e-mail: johannes.kombe [at] strath.ac.uk
I grew up in Münster, Germany. Via a brief semester in Munich, I began studying Physics at Oxford. After finishing my undergraduate degree in 2015 I decided to take a break from Uni, and went to Tanzania to teach at a local secondary school. Upon returning to Germany I began my PhD under the supervision of Corinna Kollath in Bonn. I worked on “Nonequilibrium Dynamics of Correlated Fermi Gases”, and subsequently joined the QOQMS group as a postdoc in 2020. In my spare time I enjoy reading, music, cooking, and generally being outside.
Natalie Pearson
Room JA / e-mail: natalie.pearson [at] strath.ac.uk
I grew up in London and then went to Oxford to study Medicine but as you may guess from my presence in this group I made a handbrake turn into Physics and now intend to spend the rest of my life proving that it was a good move. Having never quite wrapped my mind around the bizarreness of quantum mechanics (not to say that I have mastered all the other fields), and interested by the computational implications of quantum computers I did my PhD in Computational Physics at ETH Zurich but actually spent most of that time in an experimental lab in Copenhagen. As a result I’m a bit of a mix of experiment and theory, stitched together with keen-ness and running on coffee and chocolate. I now work on bringing together theory and experiment in the hope of realising some cool quantum simulations and computations on Rydberg atoms.

Graduate Students

Ieva Cepaite
Room JA 7.30 / e-mail: ieva.cepaite [at] strath.ac.uk
Ieva was born in Vilnius, Lithuania and at the tender age of 9 commenced a trek of European proportions, spending 5 years in Alicante (Spain), 5 years in Helsinki (Finland) and finally doing her undergrad and Masters’ degree in Computational Physics at the University of Edinburgh. She ended up in the fields of Physics and Computer Science, where the currency was Information: her favourite building block of the Universe. She is particularly fond of Quantum Computing and has done work in areas of Quantum Cryptography and Quantum Machine Learning. In her spare time she debates, hill-walks, plays piano, writes (fiction and non-fiction) and most definitely dances.
Tom Bintener
Room JA 7.30 / e-mail: tom.bintener [at] strath.ac.uk
I was born and raised in the tiny country of Luxembourg, where I discovered my passion for sciences. Specifically I enjoyed Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, and Chemistry. For my undergraduate degree I moved to Glasgow in 2014 and started studying Mathematics and Physics here at the University of Strathclyde. I then obtained my BSc Hons in Mathematics and Physics in 2018 and directly continued my career to pursue a PhD in Physics. In my spare time I enjoy cooking, travelling, and a big passion of mine is music as I also play the guitar.
Tomas Kozlej
Room JA / e-mail: tomas.kozlej [at] strath.ac.uk
Born in Slovakia and raised in Cyprus, Tomas completed the great European triangle by studying a integrated masters in Theoretical physics at the University of Glasgow where he graduated in 2020. His thesis was on the topic of 'Single copy quantum state discrimination', completed under the supervision of Dr Sarah Croke. The next opportunity for Tomas came just a short stroll downtown from University of Glasgow, joining the University of Strathclyde for a PhD position in their Rydberg quantum computation/simulation efforts, with focus on theoretical and numerical problems. In his spare time he enjoys learning piano, playing guitar, reading, writing, primal movement, chess and writing lengthy lists about himself.
Tomohiro Hashizume
Room JA 7.27 / e-mail: tomohiro.hashizume [at] strath.ac.uk
Born in Japan, raised in America, matured in Japan, aged in Australia and, here I am, in the UK! For me, the only consistent things in this world are the laws of physics (at least to our knowledge), so I decided to pursue a career in science. I did my undergraduate and Honors in the University of Queensland in Australia. During my time in Australia I worked on some small projects on cosmological simulations and atomic interferometers. My masters thesis is on Matrix Product State techniques for 2D lattices with Ian McCulloch. I also participated in 8th international physics tournament (contact me if you are interested). For my PhD project I study the effects of introducing long-range interactions to a quantum system. I enjoy various things from music to comedy, except for anything involves some strenuous exercise!
Sebastian Schmid
Room JA 7.27 / e-mail: sebastian.schmid [at] strath.ac.uk
Growing up at the Lake of Zürich, Sebastian’s interests developed in Science, Literature and Philosophy – Science as a way to understand the world around him, Philosophy and Literature to understand the people around him. The final decision for studying Physics at ETH Zürich was mostly a pragmatic one, with Philosophy and Literature seeming to be the better interests to follow as a hobby. Not believing in the concept of a closed system, anything open in Physics catches his interest, most of all nonequilibrium phenomena. In his free time, he enjoys stories – be they written down or told, conveyed through a video game or a speech, or, best of all, experienced! This passion is complemented and extended by card- and boardgames, walks and dancing.
Sridevi Kuriyattil
Room JA 7.27 / e-mail: kuriyattil-sridevi [at] strath.ac.uk
Sridevi was born in India, and she spent most of her childhood in the suburbs of Kalpakkam. She joined the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal (IISER-B), in 2015 and, in the period of five years, completed projects in various areas of Physics, from Astrophysics to High-Energy Physics. Finally, she found her interest in Many-Body Quantum Physics and worked on Solitons for her Master's thesis with Dr Sebastian Wüster. Sridevi joined the University of Strathclyde to continue her journey to understand the various aspects of many-body physics focusing on quantum circuits. She enjoys dancing, sketching, travelling and most importantly, reading and hoarding books.

Former Group members

Liam Walker
PhD 2016-2020, Postdoc 2020-2021

François Damanet
Postdoc 2016-2020

Jorge Yago
Phd 2014-2019, Postdoc 2019-2020

Araceli Venegas-Gomez
Phd 2016-2020

Anton Buyskikh
Phd 2013-2017, Postdoc 2017-2019

Eduardo Mascarenhas
Postdoc 2017-2019

Guanglei Xu
PhD 2013-2017

Saubhik Sarkar
PhD 2011-2017

Suzanne McEndoo
Postdoc 2014-2016

Alexandre Tacla
Postdoc 2014-2016

Johannes Schachenmayer
PhD 2009-2012, Postdoc 2013, now has a CNRS position in Strasbourg, France

  • Diploma Thesis: Dynamics and Long-Range Interactions in 1D Quantum Systems, TU Munich (2008). (Download PDF File, 6.7 MB)
  • Stephan Langer
    Postdoc 2012-2014
  • PhD thesis: Transport and real-time dynamics in one-dimensional quantum magnets and ultra-cold atomic gases, LMU Munich (2012). (Download PDF File, 6.2 MB)