Professor John Morton

John Morton is a Professor of Nanoelectronics and Nanophotonics at UCL, and Director of the UCL Quantum and Technology Institute (UCLQ) which includes over 120 researchers and 30 research groups. John’s research involves the development of quantum technologies such a quantum computers and quantum sensors, using spins in semiconductors such as silicon.

After reading Electrical Engineering at University of Cambridge, John undertook a PhD (D.Phil) at University of Oxford, to work on techniques for controlling spins as quantum bits. John was a Royal Society University Research Fellow from 2008 – 2016, and he has held back-to-back European Research Commission (ERC) grants. His awards include the Nicholas Kurti European Science Prize (2008), the Institute of Physics Moseley Medal (2013) in experimental Physics, and the Sackler International Prize in Physical Sciences (2016).

His research involves the coherent control of electron and nuclear spins in solid state materials and devices, with a focus on quantum technologies. Quantum technologies are ones which exploit quantum superposition and entanglement to achieve major advances over current technologies in areas including communication, sensing and information processing. The systems he studies include donors in silicon (including bulk measurements and transport through nanoscale devices) as well as custom-designed molecules which exhibit particular spin interactions. Specific research interests include: the transfer of quantum information between different degrees of freedom, understanding and mitigating spin decoherence mechanisms, the interaction of nuclear spins with transient electron spins and robust methods for generating spin entanglement.

John has published over 130 papers with 11,000 citations and has a h-index of 48. He has co-founded three companies in the field of quantum technology, covering quantum computing hardware and software. John has been active in the public engagement of science, including public exhibitions, documentaries, radio broadcasts and popular articles on quantum science and technology.