Steven Girvin
Yale University
Chair-Elect, Nominating Committee
Biographical Summary
Steven Girvin is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University where he also serves as Deputy Provost for Science and Technology. His research interests are in condensed matter, quantum optics, and cold atom physics. While nominally a theoretician, he has worked exceptionally closely with experimentalists throughout his career. His primary focus at present is on the quantum electrodynamics of microwave electrical circuits and quantum information processing with superconducting qubits and cavities. In his administrative role, he has broad oversight for all natural sciences departments within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as several administrative units that contribute directly to activities in the sciences.
Professor Girvin’s research has focused on theoretical studies of collective quantum behavior in many-particle systems such as the fractional quantum Hall effect, and the superconductor-insulator quantum phase transition in thin films. Since moving to Yale, his interests have extended to quantum optics, opto-mechanics, and quantum computation. Together with his experimental colleagues Robert Schoelkopf and Michel Devoret, he is bringing quantum optics to microwave superconducting circuits. In addition to being a novel new test bed of ultra-strong coupling cavity QED, this ‘circuit QED’ paradigm is an interesting architecture for solid state quantum computation. The group has recently demonstrated Grover search and Deutsch-Josza algorithms on a two qubit quantum processor.
Girvin is the author of more than 225 papers in professional journals and has given more than 400 seminars and colloquia on his work. In 1999 he co-founded the Boulder Summer School in Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, which each summer brings together graduate students from all over the world for intensive study of frontier research topics of current interest. Girvin’s professional service includes: Chair of the Advisory Board of the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara (1997-98); Member, Executive Committee, Division of Condensed Matter Physics, American Physical Society, 2001-2004; Divisional Associate Editor, Physical Review Letters, 2000-2002; organized three summer programs at the Aspen Center for Physics, and was a Member 1990-94, 1999-2004; corresponding Member of the Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics; Chair, external advisory committee, U. Chicago MRSEC, 2004-6; Member, National Research Council Panel which wrote the decadal report on Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, 1996-98; Member-at-Large of the Gordon Research Council, 2009-11; Member external advisory board, Harvard MIT Center for Ultra-Cold Atoms, 2008-; Member external advisory board, Harvard Smithsonian ITAMP, 2008-; Member external advisory board, University of Maryland – NIST Joint Quantum Institute, 2009-; Member, Advisory Council, Princeton University Department of Physics, 2009-15.
Girvin received a B.S. in physics from Bates College (1971), an M.S. from the University of Maine (1973), and his Ph.D. from Princeton (1977). He did his postdoctoral research at Indiana University and at Chalmers University in Göteborg, Sweden. After serving as a staff physicist at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) from 1979 to 1987, Girvin joined the faculty of Indiana University. Girvin moved to Yale in 2001 and in 2007 he was appointed Deputy Provost. His honors include Fellowship in the APS, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. For his work on the quantum Hall effect he shared the 2007 Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the APS.
Candidate's Statement
We face an era of great fiscal uncertainty with risks to the world economy as well as to our educational and research institutions. The world faces additional risks in a rapidly changing environment increasingly dominated by poorly understood technologies. It is crucially important for the scientific community to provide solid evidenced-based information to our policy makers and the general public. It is also essential for us to educate the public on the underlying roles that physics plays in advances in technology, biology and medicine, and the roles physics will need to play in analyzing and solving the climate and energy problems.
In an era when interdisciplinary research is becoming commonplace, it is also essential for our community to help inculcate students from a variety of disciplines in the quantitative reasoning, intuition, and analysis skills that are the strengths of the physics view of the world and problem solving. It is similarly important for us to rethink the undergraduate physics curriculum. We face the problem that unlike 300 year old biology, 300 year old physics is not wrong. Nevertheless to some, freshman lectures on the inclined plane are just not as exciting as carrying out the PCR reaction on your own DNA. Introducing modern topics such as quantum information in the first year can illustrate the wonderful excitement at the frontiers of our field. Conversely introducing diffusion and random walks will bring valuable skills and intuition to future biologists, physicians and engineers.
The nominating committee plays a key role in identifying leaders who can help us work towards these important goals.
