People

Current Group Members:

Charlie Doret
Principal Investigator and Assoc. Prof. of Physics
Office: Hopper Science 028; (413) 597-2817
Lab: Hopper Science 003
Email:  (that’s a 2, not a z)
Download C.V.

 

 

Current Students

Forrest Hu ’26

Forrest joined the lab in Fall of 2023, now a senior thesis student.  He has worked on a wide assortment of projects in optics, electronics, design, and simulations in COMSOL and ZEMAX, and is leading our ongoing quantum simulation efforts with dual-species Ca⁺ / Sr⁺ chains.

Miles Kodama ’26

Miles joins the lab in Fall 2025 as a senior thesis student.

 

 

Killian Reilly ’27

 

 

Whitman Horton ’29

 

 

 

Alyssandra Wei ’29

Alyssandra joined the lab in Spring 2025 and has been building an optical assembly for a transfer-cavity-based laser frequency stabilization.

 

 

Former Thesis Students

Sam Bishop `25
2023-2025

Implementing EIT Cooling and Resolved Sideband Thermometry of Ca⁺

PhD Student at MIT

Bless Bah Awazi `24
2021-2024

Assembly of an Apparatus for Trapping ⁸⁸Sr⁺ and ⁴⁰Ca⁺

PhD Student at Duke

Sonya Dutton `24
2022-2024

Development of a Narrow, Ultrastable Interference Filter-Stabilized External-Cavity Diode Laser for Thermometry of Sr⁺
M.S. Student at Heidelberg

Da-Yeon Koh `24
2023-2024

Construction of a Stabilized Laser for Cooling Strontium Ions

PhD Student at Stanford

Timothy Chang `23
2019-2023

A Part-per-billion test of King’s Linearity in Ca⁺

PhD Student at Stanford
LeRoy Apker Award Finalist

Renee DePencier Pinero `23

Towards a Dual-Species Ca⁺/Sr⁺ Ion Chain

Research Scientist, MIT Lincoln Lab

 

Paige Robichaud ’21
2019-2021

A New Ion Trapping System to Study Mesoscopic Heat Transfer

PhD Student at Harvard
NSF Fellowship Winner

Matthew Roychowdhury ’21
2020-2021

Towards the Precise Measurement of Isotope Shifts in Transitions of non s-state Electrons

Research Scientist, MIT Lincoln Lab; PhD Student, UC San Diego

Jacob Lezberg ’20
2019-2020

Towards the Precise Measurements of Isotope Shifts in the S_1/2 -> D_3/2 Transition of ^40-42,44,48Ca⁺

Software Engineer, General Dynamics; MSECE student at Purdue

Felix Knollman, ’19
2018-2019

Precision Measurements of Isotope Shifts in the 729 nm E2 Transition of ^40-42,44,48Ca⁺

Scientist, Ion Storage Group, NIST Boulder (9/2019 -8/2020);
PhD student at MIT

Ashay Patel, ’18
2017 – 2018

Towards an Analog Quantum Simulation of
Heat Transport in a Dual-Species Ion Chain

PhD, CalTech

Sierra Jubin ’17
2015-2017
Improvements to a System for Trapping ⁴⁰Ca⁺

PhD student in the Plasma Physics Program at Princeton

 

Sarah Stevenson ’17
2016-2017
Toward Control of Trapped ⁴⁰Ca⁺ for Quantum Simulation

Scientist, Fiber Sources & Applications Group, NIST Boulder
PhD student at CU Boulder (9/2019 – )

Ariel Silbert ’16
2015-2016
Implementation of an Experimental Setup for Trapping and Cooling ⁴⁰Ca⁺

MS in Data Analytics, George Washington
Senior Specialist at Gartner

Cole Meisenhelder ’15
2014-2015
Design and Construction of Laser Systems for Trapping and Cooling ⁴⁰Ca⁺

PhD, Harvard; Scientist at Q-Cat

 

Additional Group Alumni