Spotlight: Teresa Brecht

Teresa's picture

Teresa grew up in Minnesota and received her B.S. degrees in Math and Physics from University of Minnesota. She explored several research subjects before finding a calling in experimental condensed matter, first exploring spintronics in ferromagnet/ semiconductor hetero-structures before transitioning to quantum information in superconducting circuits at Yale where she joined Rob Schoelkopf’s group in 2011.
 
During her thesis, she worked on engineering and fabricating 3D circuit-QED structures in stacks of wafers using micromachining (or bulk wet or dry etching) in silicon and superconducting bonding with indium to bring solutions to the challenge of creating a scalable architecture that combines various quantum elements into a complex device without compromising the system performance.
 
“I believe in the next 10 years we will see an explosion of development in superconducting quantum circuits that use 3D integration for shielding, packaging, and signal routing. If some of these feature engineered 3D modes micromachined in wafers (either stationary as in cavities, or propagating as in micro-machined transmission lines), I will be very happy.” said Teresa. “It would also be vindicating if people start using our coined acronym “MMIQC” for multilayer microwave integrated quantum circuits.”
 
Teresa will defend her thesis on May 2, 2017 before joining HRL Laboratories where she will switch from superconducting circuits to quantum dots in semiconductors.  YQI wishes her the best for her new life in industrial research in quantum information and we will keep an eye out for future ”MMIQC”s! 

Fun fact

Teresa has been known to go out rock climbing, and sometimes capture spiders from the cliffside to bring home and feed to pet praying mantises. (No mantises at the moment, RIP)

Favorite publication

Bennett, C. H. & Divincenzo, D. P. Quantum information and computation. Nature 404, 247–255 (2000)

Latest publication

Brecht, T et. al. “Micromachined integrated quantum circuit containing a superconducting qubit.”  Phys. Rev. Applied 7, 044018 (2017)

Most cited

Hatridge, M., Shankar, S., Mirrahimi, M., Schackert, F., Geerlings, K., Brecht, T., Sliwa, K.M., Abdo, B., Frunzio, L., Girvin, S.M., Schoelkopf, R.J., Devoret, M.H., Quantum back-action of an individual variable-strength measurement, Science, 339 (6116), pp. 178-181 (2013)