William D. Oliver of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group was appointed to Laboratory Fellow at Lincoln Laboratory and associate director of the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE).
"I am honored to have been appointed to Lincoln Laboratory Fellow and associate director of the RLE,” Oliver said. "We have built a fantastic team that includes members from Lincoln Laboratory and MIT campus, and I look forward to developing new opportunities and interactions in the field of quantum engineering across the Laboratory, the RLE, and the new MIT.nano fabrication facility.”
The Laboratory Fellow position recognizes the laboratory’s strongest technical talent for outstanding contributions to laboratory and national-level programs over many years. Oliver has demonstrated sustained, outstanding technical achievement in quantum information science, superconducting electronics, and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology operated at cryogenic temperatures. Oliver’s primary responsibility within RLE will be to lead a broad range of quantum information science (QIS) research and development activities. He will also serve as the liaison for technical collaboration between RLE and Lincoln Laboratory.
Since joining the laboratory in 2003, Oliver has been strongly engaged in research and development both at the laboratory and on the MIT campus. At the laboratory, he has led the development of several quantum and classical information processing technologies. In parallel, he has led collaborative efforts in the Orlando Group at MIT to advance the scientific understanding of superconducting quantum bits (qubits) through widely recognized, seminal experiments that leverage the laboratory’s strong engineering expertise. Together, these projects have resulted in more than 50 scientific papers in high-profile journals and many invited talks at domestic and international conferences. In conjunction with this work, Oliver has cosupervised 9 postdocs and 11 students. Because of these contributions and collaborations, Oliver was appointed a professor of the practice in the MIT Department of Physics in July 2015.
Over many years, Oliver has identified key research directions across the full breadth of technology needed to accomplish large-scale QIS demonstrations, and his technical leadership established much of the laboratory’s early QIS research portfolio. Oliver’s primary focus has been in the area of superconducting quantum computing, where he has advanced the state of the art for the design, fabrication, and measurement of qubits in experiments performed at millikelvin temperatures. Oliver was responsible for launching two companion cryogenic electronics program areas important for future QIS demonstrations and for other U.S. Department of Defense advanced computing and imager applications. As part of this work, he laid the foundation for the laboratory to develop the world’s most advanced fabrication process for superconducting circuits. Oliver also performed the early proof-of-concept simulations and demonstrations for developing and optimizing CMOS technology for cryogenic operation.
Oliver received a BS degree in electrical engineering (EE) and a BA degree in Japanese from the University of Rochester. He performed thesis work on superconducting circuits at the University of Rochester and during an internship at Nagoya University in Japan. He received his MS degree in EE from MIT, working with Tod Machover at the MIT Media Lab, and a PhD degree in EE from Stanford University for work on quantum noise and electron entanglement with Professor Yoshihisa Yamamoto.
