National science award for CQT’s Yvonne Gao

Award-winner Yvonne Gao leads an experimental group at CQT focused on building hardware that is both scalable and robust to realise a practical quantum computer. Image credit: A*STAR.

CQT Principal Investigator Yvonne Gao has won a Young Scientist Award 2021 in the physics, information and engineering sciences category “For her work on developing the key hardware building blocks for quantum computers”.

The prestigious award is presented to researchers up to 35 years old “who have shown great potential to be world-class researchers in their fields of expertise”. The award is administered by the Singapore National Academy of Science (SNAS) and supported by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

Yvonne’s group at CQT does research on superconducting quantum computing, with the goal of constructing modular hardware building blocks that are robust and scalable. Hear more from Yvonne in this video prepared by A*STAR to celebrate the awards:

Yvonne joined CQT in May 2020 with a Fellowship from the National Research Foundation. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the National University of Singapore. Before that, she worked in A*STAR after completing her PhD at Yale University in the United States.

As well as her leading her group’s experimental work, Yvonne cares about mentoring the next generation of scientists. She believes that educating and empowering young science enthusiasts is essential to create a sustainable ecosystem for developing cutting-edge technologies. She gives public talks and supports her team to do outreach to high school students. For example for Q Camp, CQT’s annual camp for high school students, a PhD student and undergraduate working in her group prepared an online lecture and demo: https://youtu.be/TrB2NvR-P5A

Yvonne’s research publications include articles in Science, Nature, and Nature Communications. She has also recently co-authored for PRX Quantum a tutorial offering a “Practical Guide for Building Superconducting Quantum Devices” to help others entering her field of expertise.

She received the Young Scientist Award from Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on 10 December 2021. “I’m truly honoured to receive the YSA. This recognition is especially meaningful for both me and my team members as we have been working hard to establish our new research efforts in the past year,” says Yvonne.

Read more about Yvonne and this year's other award winners at NUS news and the A*STAR website.