UNIVIE description

The Faculty of Physics at Universitaet Wien (UNIVIE) has an international outstanding reputation in the field of quantum physics. Its faculty members comprise world-renowned researchers in the fields of quantum information (Profs. A. Zeilinger, M. Arndt, C. Brukner, and F. Verstraete) as well as in the fields of strongly correlated quantum systems (Prof. Yngvason) and computational physics (Profs. Dellago, Haffner, Kresse). UNIVIE certainly belongs to the most thriving and interconnected institution in Austria in the field of quantum science. Close cooperation (via joint projects, guest professorships etc.) with the leading figures within the discipline from all over the world, numerous publications in top scientific journals and many international awards make the Faculty of Physics a key player in the groundbreaking field of quantum physics. The Faculty has close links to the Vienna University of Technology (TUW), to the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and to the University of Innsbruck (Profs. Blatt, Briegel, Grimm, Weihs, Zoller). The "Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology”, a joint initiative of the University of Vienna, the Vienna University of Technology, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences founded in 2010, unites quantum physicists of Vienna's research institutions in one collaborative centre.
Markus Aspelmeyer is Professor at the University of Vienna. He received his PhD from the University of Munich in 2002 and continued his research as a Feodor Lynen Fellow in the group of Prof. A. Zeilinger at the University of Vienna. He then became Universitätsassistent at the University, Junior Researcher and Senior Researcher at IQOQI. In 2009 Aspelmeyer was appointed Professor of Physics at the Faculty of Physics, Universitaet Wien, where he now leads a large international group. He is an expert in the field of experimental quantum science, in particular quantum optics and its applications to the foundations of quantum physics, and one of the pioneers of the field of quantum optomechanics. Aspelmeyer has been the coordinator and principal investigator of several national and international research projects and is partner investigator at the Centre of Excellence Engineered Quantum Systems of the Australian Research Council (ARC) at the University of Queensland, Australia. Among other distinctions and prizes, he has received the Fresnel Prize of the European Physical Society, the Ignaz Lieben Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Fritz Kohlrausch Prize of the Austrian Physical Society, the Starting Grant of the European Research Council and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Witlef Wieczorek is a postdoctoral fellow at UNIVIE. He received his Diplom in Physics in 2005 from the TU Berlin, Germany. In 2009 he has received his PhD degree from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany working on quantum optics experiments (multiphoton entanglement) in the group of Prof. Harald Weinfurter at the MPI of Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany. He was part of the PhD programme of excellence QCCC, of the Elitenetwork of Bavaria and a fellow of the German National Academic Foundation. Since 2010 he is a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Markus Aspelmeyer. He was postdoctoral fellow of the Humboldt foundation in 2011-2012 and since 2012 is fellow of a Marie Curie Intra-European fellowship.
Jason Hoelscher-Obermaier studied physics at the universities of Regensburg and Erlangen finishing in 2009 with a thesis on continuous variable quantum information. During 2009-2011 he studied philosophy at the universities of California at Irvine and Oxford from where he obtained a Masters degree in philosophy of physics. Jason received scholarships by the Free State of Bavaria, the German National Academic Foundation and a Fulbright scholarship. In September 2011 he started a PhD on quantum optomechanics in the group of Markus Aspelmeyer.
Sebastian Hofer is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in theoretical quantum optics and optomechanics under the supervision of Prof. Markus Aspelmeyer (UNIVIE) and Prof. Klemens Hammerer (LUH). He graduated from the University of Innsbruck in 2010 where he did his master thesis in the group of Prof. Peter Zoller. Since October 2010 he is a member of the doctoral college Complex Quantum Systems (CoQuS) in Vienna.