Name: Josiah Sinclair
Title, including department and school you work in: Carl J. and Brynn B. Anderson Assistant Professor in Physics
Hometown: I was born in Winnipeg, Canada but grew up in Mali, West Africa. I spent my teenage years in Michigan and Alberta, and my family now lives across Canada. Toronto is the city I’ve lived in the longest, so it feels the most like home to me now.
Educational/professional background: I got my BS in physics at Calvin University and my doctorate studying under Aephraim Steinberg at the University of Toronto, and I was a postdoctoral fellow in Vladan Vuletic’s group at MIT.
What is your field of research, and how did you get into it? I am an experimental physicist researching atomic physics platforms for quantum computing. My research focuses on harnessing the power of nonlocal entanglement to build scalable modular fault-tolerant quantum computers and distributed quantum sensors with atom arrays and optical cavities. I’m fascinated by quantum mechanics and by the questions it raises about our world. Why is a quantum computer so much more powerful than a classical one? What are the physical limits of measurement, computation, and communication? And can we harness the strange behavior of quantum phenomena to advance those limits? What is really going on at the quantum level of reality?
What attracted you to UW–Madison? UW–Madison was the whole package for me: a strong physics department, a great start-up package, and proximity to family and friends in the Midwest. My wife and I fell in love with Madison when we visited — we could picture ourselves raising our family here!
What was your first visit to campus like? My wife and I visited in March during an unseasonably warm weekend, and it felt like the city and campus were coming to life again after winter. We had a blast exploring the city and trying out restaurants with our daughter, and we felt welcomed by faculty and staff. We especially appreciated a member of the search committee driving us around to show us different neighborhoods. From our first visit, we had a clear sense that we could have a beautiful life here.
What’s the most important lesson you wish to convey to students? “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.” – Winston Churchill
Does your work relate in any way to the Wisconsin Idea? Research is about taking what you learn in the classroom and applying it to advance human knowledge and to solve real-world problems. In my own field of atomic physics and quantum information, fundamental science and novel technology are intrinsically connected — new tools developed for quantum information technology can advance our understanding of fundamental processes in atomic physics and quantum optics — and vice versa.
What’s something interesting about your area of expertise you can share that will make us sound smarter at parties? The universe isn’t deterministic!
Hobbies/other interests: Going on walks with my wife and daughter, cycling, photography, traveling, backpacking, rock climbing, cocktail mixing, and making sourdough bread.