Dr. Gerhard Ulbricht
Gerhard was a member of the lab from 2012-2017, and is now working on MKIDs at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. He graduated from the University of Stuttgart, Germany and earned his PhD 2009 at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research under Nobel Laureate Professor Klaus von Klitzing. His work focused on fabrication and testing of X-ray and optical MKIDs.
Matt received his Ph.D. in Physics from UCSB in August 2016. He is now studying to become a Catholic priest and Friar in the Dominican Order. Matt can be reached at mstrader zero eight at gmail.
Dr. Sean McHugh
Sean graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2003, where he worked in Professor Dan McCammon’s group. He did his Ph.D. work in low temperature experimental physics (specifically, molecular magnets) at the City College of New York (CUNY) with Professor Myriam Sarachik. Sean was in the lab from 2009 to 2012.
Dr. Kieran O'Brien
Kieran got his Ph.D. in 2000 from St. Andrews, where he worked with Prof. Keith Horne on X-ray Binaries. After stints as a postdoc at Amsterdam and St. Andrews he joined ESO as a Staff Astronomer. He joined Mazin’s lab as an assistant project scientist in November, 2009, and left in 2012 with the title of Research Scientist. Kieran is an expert in rapid optical and X-ray observations of low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). Kieran has recently been appointed as a faculty member in the instrumentation group at Durham University.
Dr. Danica Marsden
Danica was a Keck Institute for Space Studies postdoctoral scholar at Caltech visiting UCSB for two years. She worked on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) project during her Ph.D. with Mark Devlin at UPenn, culminating in 2011, studying the CMB and high redshift galaxies. Danica is interested in the development of technology, such as MKIDs, to further experimental cosmology in order to investigate questions about the early Universe and structure formation.
Dr. Julian van Eyken
Julian graduated in 1998 from the University of Cambridge in the UK, and earned his PhD working in exoplanets with Jian Ge's instrumentation group at Penn State and the University of Florida. He went on to work on the PTF-Orion search for young exoplanets as a postdoc at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech, working with Dr. David Ciardi. He joined Mazin's lab as an assistant project scientist at the end of 2012 and departed in 2015 to work on the NASA Exoplanet Archive.
Paul graduated from UCSB with a Ph.D. in Physics in August, 2017. His thesis focused on observations of LMXBs and short period compact binaries with ARCONS, as well as extensive work on developing, fabricating, and testing PtSi MKIDs for 10 kpix and larger arrays. He is currently a NRC Post-doc at NIST Boulder.
Seth graduated from UCSB with a Ph.D. in September 2017. Seth’s thesis project focused on high contrast imaging of exoplanets with the DARKNESS instrument at Palomar. He is now working as staff at JPL.
Alex graduated from U. Minnesota and was a graduate student at UCSB. Alex's thesis focused on high contrast imaging of exoplanets with the MEC instrument at Subaru. Alex is now a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow at JPL.
Clint graduated from the University of Colorado, where he did MKID work in Jason Glenn’s group. His thesis project focused on high contrast imaging of debris disks with a MKID camera on the NASA PICTURE-C balloon. Clint is now a postdoctoral scholar at CERN.
* = received a Ph.D. from UCSB
Isabel graduated with a Ph.D. in 2021 and is currently working as an Engineer at Lockheed Martin. Her work at UCSB focused on exoplanet instrumentation and RV surveys of open clusters. Isabel was a NSF graduate research fellow.
Dr. Rupert Dodkins
Rupert obtained his DPhil from the University of Oxford where he worked with Kieran O'Brien and Niranjan Thatte on optical MKIDs for exoplanets. Rupert jointly owns the world record for the Most Skateboard Heelflips in One Minute. He is currently working at a machine learning startup in Santa Barbara.
Dr. Gregoire Coiffard
Greg graduated from Grenoble Institute of Technology with a specialty in physics and nano-science. He obtained his PhD at the Institute of Millimeter Radioastronomy in Grenoble in 2015. The main topic of his research was the fabrication of MKID arrays for the NIKA2 instrument. Greg began at UCSB in June 2016, and is currently in Helsinki working at a quantum computing company.
Neelay did his undergrad at Caltech and and received his Ph.D. from UCSB in 2021. His research focused on MKID detectors and readout electronics as well as focal plane speckle nulling. He is currently a post-doc at LBNL.
Dr. Kristina Davis
Kristina Davis was a National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow. She is currently a staff scientist at LASP.
Nick graduated from UCSB in Spring 2022. As a graduate student at UCSB he won a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF). Nick is a qubit scientist at Google Quantum AI.
*Dr. Matt McEwen
Matt is graduated from UCSB in October 2022, after working as a student researcher with the Google Quantum Hardware team based in Santa Barbara. His work focuses on sources of correlated error in large qubit arrays, including from high-energy radiation and cosmic rays. Originally from Australia, Matt graduated from UNSW in 2017 and now works at Google Quantum AI.
Dr. Miguel Daal
Miguel graduated from Brown University, and then obtained a Ph.D. with advisor Bernard Sadoulet at Berkeley working on MKIDs and the CDMS project. Miguel began at UCSB in August 2016 as a postdoc, and departed in 2023 as an Assistant Project Scientist.
Sarah graduated from Boston College in 2017 and UCSB with a Ph.D in Astrophysics in 2023. She is currently a postdoc at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI). Her personal website can be found here: https://sarahgsteiger.weebly.com/
Noah graduated from the University of Michigan in 2017, and UCSB with a Ph.D in Astrophysics in 2023. He is currently working in quantum computing at HRL.
Dr. Jeb Bailey
Jeb was a Project Scientist who joined the group in May 2018. Prior to joining Mazin Lab, Dr. Bailey was a calibration scientist for the JWST MIRI instrument working out of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. He received his PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Michigan in 2015 where he helped design and commission the Michigan/Magellan Fiber System for the Magellan Clay Telescope. He is currently working at Caltech Optical Observatories.
Dr. Giovanni Strampelli
Giovanni was a post-doctoral fellow at UCSB and joined the group in November 2022. Prior to joining the Mazin Lab, Giovanni was a post-doctoral scientist at Johns Hopkins University and prior to that, he was a Graduate Student in the Science Mission Office with the Space Telescope Science Institute, where he pursued his Ph.D. training in collaboration with the University of La Laguna (Spain). He is currently a post-doc at STSCI.
Jenny graduated from Harvey Mudd College with a B.S. in physics in 2018. Her main research interests include detector research and development, radio frequency electronics, and signal processing. Jenny won the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF), and is now a Staff Engineer at SLAC.
