Dear QNN Group Members, Alums and Affiliates,

Happy summer everyone! We have had lots of news and comings and goings.  First of all, Karl has now been in his role as EE Faculty Head for a few months and is getting used to it, finding more time to interact with the group and keeping at least one toe dipped in the research puddle lately.  He also was recently honored to receive a new chair appointment, the Julius I. Stratton Chaired Professorship in Electrical Engineering and Physics, which comes from MIT’s Provost.  This will also lessen the Keathley – Keithley confusion that often appeared with his previous chair 🙂!

Hope you are all doing well.  If you’re ever in the area, of course come by and say hello.

Best regards,

Karl and Donnie

Comings and Goings

The last few months we’ve welcomed the following new group members:

• Giorgia Ciuffarella, Polytechnic of Turin & École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
• Gabriel LeGuay, Federal Polytechnique School of Zurich
• Davide Mondin, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
• Hanson Nguyen, returning as an MSRP student this summer

The following members have now left and become alumni group members:

• Andi Qu, completed his UROP & graduated!
• Eric Zhan, completed his UROP
• Stephen Kandeh, Graduated with M.Eng!! 
• John Simonaitis, Graduated with PhD!!
• Matthew Yeung, will be continuing Post-doc work at MIT
• Felix Ritzkowski, Continuing to work in partnership at DESI in Germany

The following members have graduated, but will be staying on in the group:

• Owen Medeiros, Graduated with PhD!!
• Alejandro Simon, Graduated with his M.S.!

Awards

• Reed Foster has received the 2025 Claude E. Shannon Award!
• DJ Paul received the Mathworks Fellowship! 
• Joey Alongi received an NSF fellowship to support his work in exploring bunched electron sources in SEMs for ultrafast attosecond electron microscopy of optical and plasmonic nanostructures.
• Karl has been awarded a new chair! His new title is the Julius A. Stratton Professor in Electrical Engineering and Physics.

Theses

S. Kandeh, “ FPGA Based Data Acquisition System for Cryogenic Device Verification,” M.Eng thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2025.

A. Simon, “Ab Initio Modeling of Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors,” M.S. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2025.

J. Simonaitis, “Low-Energy Electron Photon Interactions in a Scanning Electron Microscope,” PhD Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2025.

O. Medeiros, “Investigation of Thin Film Supercurrent and Photodetection in Wide Niobium Nitride Wires,” PhD Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2025.

• His defense can be viewed here. https://youtu.be/48O7o0BdrsM

Publications (02/01/25 – 05/31/25)

L.C. Blackburn, A. Wynn, K. K. Berggren, and N. Gershenfeld, “A Compact Bit Serial Memory Cell for Adiabatic Quantum Flux Parametron Register Files,” IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, pp. 1–5, Feb. 2025, doi: 10.1109/TASC.2025.3540048.

M. Castellani, O. Medeiros, A. Buzzi, R. A. Foster, M. Colangelo, and K. K. Berggren, “A superconducting full-wave bridge rectifier,” Nat Electron, pp. 1–9, May 2025, doi: 10.1038/s41928-025-01376-4.

A. McCarthy et al., “High-resolution long-distance depth imaging LiDAR with ultra-low timing jitter superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors,” Optica, OPTICA, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 168–177, Feb. 2025, doi: 10.1364/OPTICA.544877.

M. Yeung et al., “Bandwidth of Lightwave-Driven Electronic Response from Metallic Nanoantennas,” Nano Lett., vol. 25, no. 13, pp. 5250–5257, Apr. 2025, doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c06536.

H.K. Warner et al., “Coherent control of a superconducting qubit using light,” Nat. Phys., vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 831–838, May 2025, doi: 10.1038/s41567-025-02812-0.

Conferences & Proceedings (02/01/25 – 05/31/25)

P.D. Keathley, “Nanoscale Petahertz Electronics for Field-Resolved Spectroscopy,” presented at CLEO, Long Beach, CA, May 2025.

K.K. Berggren, “Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors for Quantum Sensing: From Photon-Number Resolution to Dark-Matter Detection,” presented at the Munich Conference on Quantum Science & Technology, Kufstein, Austria, Jun. 05, 2025.

S.-H. Nam et al., “Toward a portable stimulated Raman scattering system: insights from benchtop ultrafast coherent Raman studies,” in Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Sensing XXVI, SPIE, May 2025, pp. 70–75. doi:10.1117/12.3053483.

Preprints (02/01/25 – 05/31/25)

O. Medeiros et al., “Scalable Superconducting Nanowire Memory Array with Row-Column Addressing,” Apr. 01, 2025, arXiv: arXiv:2503.22897. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2503.22897.

O. Medeiros et al., “Scalable Superconducting Nanowire Memory Array with Row-Column Addressing,” Apr. 01, 2025, arXiv: arXiv:2503.22897. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2503.22897.

D.J. Paul, T. X. Zhou, and K. K. Berggren, “Determination of Mid-Infrared Refractive Indices of Superconducting Thin Films Using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy,” Feb. 28, 2025, arXiv: arXiv:2503.00169. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2503.00169.

F. Ritzkowsky, M. Yeung, G. L. Dolso, L.-T. Chou, and P. D. Keathley, “High-Repetition Rate, CEP-stable Shortwave Infrared Source with Two-Cycle Pulses for Field-Resolved Spectroscopy,” Apr. 08, 2025, Optica Open. doi: 10.1364/opticaopen.28734833.v2.

Z. Scherübl et al., “Multimode operation of a superconducting nanowire switch in the nanosecond regime,” Feb. 25, 2025, arXiv: arXiv:2502.17980. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2502.17980.

R. Jing et al., “Bolometric Superconducting Optical Nanoscopy (BOSON),” Apr. 20, 2025, arXiv: arXiv:2504.14547. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2504.14547.