Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain
Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born October 11, 1965, in Manresa, Catalonia, Spain) is a Spanish physicist. He won the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award in technical and scientific research, and has also worked on Trapped ion quantum computers.
Biography
Juan Ignacio Cirac is one of the Spanish physicists who is best known internationally. He graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1988 and moved to the United States in 1991 to work as a postdoctoral scientist in the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in University of Colorado at Boulder.Between 1991 and 1996 he was teaching physics in the Ciudad Real Faculty of Chemistry, University of Castilla-La Mancha where he started his quantum computational studies.
Later he became professor in the Institut für Theoretische Physik in Innsbruck, Austria. He has been the Director of the Theoretical Division of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, since 2001. He received Honorary Professorship at the Technical University of Munich, since 2002. He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor and Research Advisor at ICFO - the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona since its foundation in 2002. He has been a member of research teams at the universities of Harvard, Technical University of Munich, Hamburg, UCSB, Hannover, Bristol, Paris, CEA/Saclay, École Normale Supérieure, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His research is on the quantum theory of information. He has developed a computational system based on quantum mechanics which it is hoped will lead to the design of much faster algorithms in the future. He has contributed to applications that demonstrate the viability of his theories, performing calculations that are impossible with current systems for processing and transmitting information. According to his theories, quantum computing will revolutionise the information society and lead to much more efficient and secure communication of information. Apart from his interest in quantum theory, he has investigated degenerated quantum gases and quantum optics. Juan Ignacio Cirac has published more than 200 articles in the most prestigious journals and is one of the most cited authors in his field of research.
Cirac has been granted the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category ex aequo with Peter Zoller. Cirac has also been awarded The Franklin Institute's 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, with David J. Wineland and Peter Zoller.
External links
Lectures and panels
- Video of panel discussion, "Harnessing Quantum Physics" with Ignacio Cirac, Michele Mosca, Avi Wigderson, Daniel Gottesman, Peter Shor and Dorit Aharonov, at the Quantum to Cosmos festival