2025 Nobel Laureate in physics once served as a graduate student mentor at CU Boulder
Like many rockstar scientists, 2025 physics Nobel Laureate John Martinis spent time in Boulder’s rich scientific ecosystem mentoring graduate students and inspiring others in quantum computing.
In the 1990s, while working as a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Martinis also held the position of a physics lecturer at CU Boulder. His university affiliation focused on research collaborations and mentoring graduate students as a research advisor in the Department of Physics.
“It was important to us to build partnerships with NIST scientists, to foster more research collaborations and opportunities for our students,” said John Cumalat, professor of physics and chair of the department at the time of Martinis’ appointment. “John was instrumental in recruiting graduate students to CU Boulder.”
It was important to us to build partnerships with NIST scientists, to foster more research collaborations and opportunities for our students. John [Martinis] was instrumental in recruiting graduate students to CU Boulder.
The Department of Physics history book lists Martinis as a lecturer from 1993 to 1999. He supervised several PhD students, some in partnership with John Price, emeritus professor of physics.
Price fondly recalls his research collaborations with Martinis. When Price was a new faculty member starting out in a related field, Martinis shared his circuit design and building expertise, helped make samples, and provided general guidance and wisdom.
“He was generously helpful with people who had aligned interests and wanted to see everyone do interesting science,” said Price.
While at NIST-Boulder, Martinis worked on fundamental physics and technologies that were critical to the development of quantum devices now used in NIST electronic current and voltage standards.
"John enriched the scientific community not only in quantum computing related electronics, but also in several areas related to low-temperature microelectronics,” said Price.
Much of Martinis’ work at NIST has continued under the leadership of Ray Simmonds (also a physics lecturer) and other group leaders, with physics graduate students continuing to conduct their doctoral research at NIST.
“This is the rich opportunity that our students receive –– it’s not only the classroom instruction, but also the broader scientific community,” said Price.
Among today'squantum information superstars who worked at NISTareKent Irwin (top left), now at Stanford, who helped to develop highly sensitivesingle-photon sensors and John Martinis (right). This photo was taken in the 1990s at the NIST-Boulder laboratories. Photo by NIST.
CU’s partnership with NIST has flourished over the years, both through JILA, a joint institute between CU Boulder and NIST, and through the Professional Research Experience Program (CU PREP) which provides research opportunities for students and postdoctoral researchers with scientists at NIST.
Martinis was one of the co-organizers of the inaugural Boulder Summer School for Condensed Matter and Materials Physics with Professor Leo Radzihovsky, which launched in 2000. He has returned to give lectures during the annual school several times since, maintaining connections with colleagues at CU Boulder.
Martinis later became a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, before working for Google and most recently co-founded a quantum computing startup Qolab.
The Nobel
Martinis shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and Michel Devoret “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit,” according to the.
In the 1980s, Martinis was a graduate student in John Clarke’s lab at UC Berkeley, working alongside postdoctoral researcher Michel Devoret. Their experiments focused on electrical components called Josephson junctions – devices made of two superconductors separated by a thin oxide layer that particles ordinarily can’t cross.
Martinis shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics with John Clarke and Michel Devoret for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.
However, thanks to a quantum effect called tunneling, pairs of electrons can pass through – even though this defies the laws of classical physics.
The idea dates back to 1928, when physicist George Gamow used quantum tunneling to explain why certain materials give off radiation, or alpha decay. Gamow later became a professor of physics at CU Boulder and is the namesake to both the Gamow Tower in the Duane Physics and Astrophysics building and to theGeorge Gamow Memorial Lecture Series.
Superconductors, when cooled to very low temperatures, allow electricity to flow without resistance. In this environment, particles behave as one unified wave, all moving together as if they are one.
Through a series of experiments, the team discovered that these large-scale quantum states acted like individual particles, showing behaviors of quantum mechanics like tunneling and discrete energy levels.
This work created the basis for using superconducting circuits to create qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum computers. It laid the groundwork for many researchers and companies now working to build the first operational quantum computers that have the potential to revolutionize technology in many areas, like drug discovery and cryptography.
Want to learn more? CU Boulder boasts five Nobel laureates, four of them in physics. .