2025 OYRA Awardee - Norman Yao

Harvard University

Citation: “For seminal experimental and theoretical contributions at the interface between condensed matter and atomic, molecular, and optical physics.”

Bio: Dr. Norman Yao is a professor of physics at Harvard University. He received his bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in physics and mathematics from Harvard University in 2009. His bachelor’s thesis on nonlinear mechanics in biopolymer networks, performed under the guidance of professor David Weitz, was awarded the Captain Jonathan Fay Prize. He then continued his doctoral studies at Harvard working with professor Mikhail Lukin, before beginning postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley as a Miller Fellow. His thesis was awarded the 2015 Deborah Jin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics. In 2016, he joined the physics department at UC Berkeley as an assistant professor. 

Dr. Yao’s research lies at the interface between AMO physics, condensed matter, and quantum information science. In recent years, the synergy between these fields has been strengthened by the ability to assemble complex, quantum many-body systems from individual atoms, ions, molecules and photons. These advances have opened the door to realizing non-equilibrium phases of matter, to tests of quantum computational advantage, and to measuring the intrinsic properties of topological phases. The dialogue between theory and experiment is especially crucial to addressing these questions and Dr. Yao’s research group employs a variety of theoretical, experimental, and numerical tools.

A recurring theme in Dr. Yao’s research is that much of the power of quantum mechanics remains concealed if one focuses solely on systems in thermal equilibrium. Indeed, many directions, ranging from quantum metrology to information processing rely upon the production and manipulation of entanglement in systems that are far-from-equilibrium. Of late, his research interests include the study of spin liquids, Floquet phases of matter, quantum information scrambling, emergent hydrodynamics and quantum sensing at high pressures.

Website: https://yao.physics.harvard.edu/