Norbert M. Linke to Return to UMD

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Published: Wednesday, February 26 2025 10:04

The National Quantum Laboratory at Maryland (QLab) welcomes a renowned expert in quantum physics, computing and networking to serve as its new director, effective September 1, 2025. Norbert Linke, Ph.D., brings a decade of experience running a quantum computer user facility and conducting research on the applications of trapped atomic ions.Norbert Linke

With this appointment, Linke will return to the University of Maryland’s Department of Physics, where he worked as a faculty member from 2019 to 2022, and he will hold the first IonQ Professorship, an endowed position designed to support faculty focused on quantum computing research and advancing quantum strategy in Maryland and beyond. The IonQ Professorship was established with a $1 million gift from quantum computing firm IonQ and fully matched by the Maryland Department of Commerce. The match was made through the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund (MEIF), a state program created to spur basic and applied research in scientific and technical fields at colleges and universities.

Linke, who is currently a professor of physics at Duke University, co-invented several of the original patents that enabled the launch of IonQ, born out of UMD research and headquartered in College Park. The QLab was established in 2021 through a partnership between IonQ and UMD as the nation's first user facility to provide the global scientific community with hands-on access to a commercial-grade quantum computer. Housed in the Division of Information Technology and located in the Capital of Quantum in College Park, the QLab is dedicated to advancing quantum research and education.

"I'm honored to lead the QLab in its mission to make quantum computing accessible and drive innovation. I'm excited to work with the talented team here to push the boundaries of what's possible with this technology," Linke said. “President Pines gave QLab a motto, which is ‘Quantum for All.’ Following this, my vision for QLab is to provide broad access to the latest quantum resources for researchers, commercial stakeholders, as well as students and educators.”

The QLab fosters a vibrant quantum community, through its QLab Fellows and Global User Programs, as well as the QLab Collaboration Space, a dedicated hub for innovation that opened in 2023. The QLab also supports groundbreaking research through seed grants and collaborations with companies in the Quantum Startup Foundry, resulting in numerous publications and software development.

“Linke’s expertise and leadership will be invaluable as we continue to push the boundaries of quantum computing and foster a collaborative environment for innovation,” said Jeffrey K. Hollingsworth, vice president of information technology and chief information officer at UMD.

Linke's appointment comes at a time of rapid growth and development in the field of quantum computing, especially in the state of Maryland, where Gov. Wes Moore recently announced a $1 billion Capital of Quantum Initiative anchored by UMD and built on a landmark public-private partnership, in which the QLab is poised to play a key role.

Original story: https://umdrightnow.umd.edu/university-of-maryland-names-new-director-of-national-quantum-laboratory

About the QLab:
The National Quantum Laboratory at Maryland (QLab) is a national user facility that provides the scientific community with access to a commercial-grade quantum computer. Established through a partnership between IonQ and the University of Maryland, the QLab is dedicated to advancing quantum research and education and is housed in the Division of Information Technology.

Kiyong Kim Elected as a Fellow of Optica

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Published: Thursday, January 30 2025 05:33

Kiyong Kim has been selected as a 2025 Optica Fellow for his pioneering contributions to the generation and understanding of terahertz radiation from strong laser field interactions with matter.  He is one of 121 members, from 27 countries, selected for their significant contributions to the advancement of optics and photonics through education, research, engineering, business leadership and sKiyong Kimervice.

Kim received his B.S. from Korea University and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. His graduate research focused on measuring ultrafast dynamics in the interaction of intense laser pulses with gases, atomic clusters, and plasmas. This work earned him the Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award from the American Physical Society.

Following his doctoral studies, Kim moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow and while there received a Distinguished Performance Award. After accepting a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland in 2008, he received a DOE Early Career Research Award and an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award. Kim also received the departmental Richard A. Ferrell Distinguished Faculty Fellowship in 2014.

From 2021 to 2022, Kim held appointments at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and the Center for Relativistic Laser Science (CoReLS) at the Korean Institute for Basic Science, leading experiments on petawatt laser-driven electron acceleration, nonlinear Compton scattering of petawatt laser pulses and GeV electrons, and high-power terahertz generation.

With colleagues in physics and the Institute for Research in Electronics & Applied Physics (IREAP), he is co-PI on a $1.61M Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to upgrade high-power laser systems at UMD.

Malcolm Maas Named 2025-26 Churchill Scholar

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Published: Wednesday, January 29 2025 01:40

University of Maryland senior Malcolm Maas has been awarded a 2025-26 Churchill Scholarship, joining only 15 other science, engineering and mathematics students nationwide in winning the prestigious honor. 

“We could not be prouder of how Malcolm Maas represents the University of Maryland to the world,” said Amitabh Varshney, dean of UMD’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. “Malcolm is a phenomenal student researcher who is driven to understand complex world problems like climate change and provide innovative solutions to them.”Malcolm Maas. Photo courtesy of same.

Maas, who plans to graduate in three years with bachelor’s degrees in atmospheric and oceanic science (AOSC) and physics, will receive full funding to pursue a one-year master’s degree at the University of Cambridge’s Churchill College in the United Kingdom. The scholarship covers full tuition, a competitive stipend, travel costs and the chance to apply for a special research grant. 

Maas plans to pursue a Master of Philosophy degree in mathematics.

“I feel incredibly honored to have received this scholarship, and I’m very grateful to everyone who has supported me on my way here,” Maas said. “I’m excited for the opportunity to explore atmospheric dynamics further and to experience Cambridge next year.”

A total of 127 nominations this year came from 82 participating institutions. Ten UMD students have been nominated in the past seven years—and nine of them have been named Churchill Scholars.

“The University of Maryland’s remarkable success in racking up Churchill Scholarships testifies to the excellence of the research opportunities and mentorship our undergraduates receive,” said Francis DuVinage, director of UMD’s National Scholarships Office. “Malcolm Maas’ record of accomplishment as a third-year senior puts him in a class by himself.”

Since 2022, Maas has been working with AOSC Associate Professor Jonathan Poterjoy on fundamental challenges associated with environmental prediction and validation of atmospheric modeling systems. Specifically, he is quantifying the degree to which commonly used data assimilation methods shift models away from physically plausible solutions due to commonly adopted but incorrect assumptions. Maas presented their work in January 2025 at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting.

“Malcolm initiated our research collaboration on his own and I fully expect him to draft a first-author paper that we submit for publication this year,” Poterjoy said. “I feel that Malcolm can succeed in virtually any field, and I am pleased to see that he chose a research career in atmospheric science where his talents can have broad human impact.” 

Maas’ research interests and experiences extend beyond his work with Poterjoy and currently range from weather time scales to climate time scales. 

In summer 2024, Maas interned at the University of Chicago with Geophysical Sciences Professor Tiffany Shaw, where he assessed extreme heat and atmospheric circulation trends associated with Arctic sea ice loss in climate models and observational datasets. He presented this work at the American Geophysical Union’s Annual Meeting in 2024.

In summer 2023, Maas participated in the undergraduate summer intern program at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and worked on a project with Kostas Tsigaridis, a research scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Maas used a large dataset of Earth system model simulations to explore the effects of volcanoes on climate and atmospheric sulfur. He used machine learning to develop a tool that estimates where unidentified historical eruptions happened based on ice core data. Maas presented this work at the European Geosciences Union’s General Assembly in 2024 in Austria.

When Maas arrived at UMD in 2022, he joined a group of AOSC students installing and managing a micronet—a small-scale network of weather sensors—across the university’s campus. Five weather stations now provide minute-by-minute updates on the temperature, wind speed, pressure, dew point and rain rate on campus. Maas helped create the data collection system and user-friendly graphs to visualize the data, which are displayed on the UMD Weather website.

When the university and the Maryland Department of Emergency Management installed their first weather tower as part of the Maryland Mesonet in 2023, they asked Maas to quickly adapt his micronet visualization tools to work with the mesonet data. The 23 towers operational around the state—with more than 70 planned—help to advance localized weather prediction and ensure the safety of Maryland's residents and visitors.

For his Gemstone honors research project, Maas and 10 teammates have been working with UMD Mechanical Engineering Professor Johan Larsson to optimize the shape of marine propellers.

In high school, Maas helped build the first global tornado climatology database. He gathered and processed historical data for over 100,000 tornadoes that occurred around the world. The project’s website raked in 160,000 page views during its first year, and the work was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2024.

Outside of class, Maas plays the pipe organ, represents the Ellicott Community on the Student Government Association, tutors with the Society of Physics Students and is a member of the Ballooning Club. He received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, National Merit Scholarship, President’s Scholarship and the Department of Physics’ Angelo Bardasis Scholarship.

After his time at the University of Cambridge, Maas plans to pursue a Ph.D. in atmospheric science.

Zohreh Davoudi Awarded Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

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Published: Thursday, January 16 2025 00:01

Zohreh Davoudi, an associate professor of physics at the University of Maryland and Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The award, which was established in 1996 to recognize young professionals who have demonstrated exceptional potential for leadership in their fields, is the highest honor the U.S. government bestows on early-career scientists and engineers.Zohreh Davoudi

Davoudi, who is also a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the Associate Director for Education at the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation, is one of 398 scientists and engineers nationwide to be acknowledged by President Biden.

“I am truly honored by this recognition,” Davoudi says. “This award signifies that the President and the U.S. government appreciate the important role scientists and engineers play in advancing society. I am excited to continue exploring the frontiers of nuclear physics and quantum information science using advanced classical- and quantum-computational methods and to continue building a community of amazing junior and senior collaborators who share the same or similar goals.”

Davoudi’s research focuses on strongly interacting quantum systems and investigates how elementary particles, like quarks and gluons, come together and form the matter that makes up our world. Her work to understand the foundations of matter includes developing theoretical frameworks and applying cutting-edge tools, like quantum simulations, to studying problems in nuclear and high-energy physics. Ultimately, she hopes to describe the evolution of mater into steady states that occurred in the early universe and that happens at a smaller scale in the aftermath of high-energy particle collisions, like those in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.

Davoudi has also been acknowledged by other awards, including a Simons Emmy Noether Faculty Research Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Department of Energy's Early Career Award and a Kenneth Wilson Award in Lattice Gauge Theory.

“Zohreh is an exceptionally agile physicist and an expert in nuclear theory,” says Steve Rolston, a professor and chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland. “She has embraced the new world of quantum computing and is now a leader in figuring out how to use quantum computation to solve challenging nuclear and high-energy physics problems.”

Original story by Bailey Bedford

Next Gen Retroreflectors Launch to the Moon

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Published: Wednesday, January 15 2025 14:02

On January 15, 2025, a precision prism reflector devised by UMD physicists once again headed to the moon, continuing a tradition begun in 1969, when the Apollo 11 crew positioned still-functioning Lunar Laser Ranging Retroreflectors (LLRR).A single 10 cm diameter corner cube retroreflector. Credit: Doug Currie

One of the physicists responsible for the original retroreflectors, Doug Currie, is the PI for the current version, Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors (NGLR).  Using intense, brief lasers pulses, scientists on Earth will reflect light off the instrument, allowing measurements of the earth-moon distance to within 1 mm of accuracy. Such precision will allow better understanding of the moon’s liquid corA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission One lander on January 15, 2024. Credit: NASA/Frank Michauxe and of general relativity.

Currie’s proposal was accepted as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project, utilizing partnerships with private industry to facilitate space launches.  Blue Ghost Mission 1 by Firefly Aerospace launched at 1:11 a.m. on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’ Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with NGLR-1 and nine other experiments. The lunar landing is scheduled for March 2.

Currie’s storied career and the preparation for the NGLR were detailed in the September 2024 issue of Terp magazine.

He was a UMD Assistant Professor, working with LLRR PI Professor Carroll Alley, at the time of the historic first venture of humans to the moon. In 2019, he was interviewed on the 50^th anniversary of Apollo 11, and was also selected for further work on retroreflectors. While the Apollo 11 retroreflectors were an array of small precision mirrors, the NGLR-1 is is a single 10 cm diameter corner cube retroreflector.

In addition to Currie, the UMD team on NGLR-1 included co-PI Drew Baden, deputy PI Dennis Wellnitz, Project Manager Ruth Chiang Carter and researchers Martin Peckerar, Chensheng Wu and Laila Wise.

Liftoff occurs at 43:01.