Erika Janitz - A Brief Biography

Dr. Erika Janitz has a unique background at the intersection of electrical engineering and physics. With bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing; positions as a Research Fellow at Harvard University's Laboratory for Nanoscale Optics and as a Visiting Researcher in physics at the Technical University of Denmark; a PhD In Physics from McGill University; and postdoctoral work at both McGill and ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) Zurich, Dr. Janitz joins Schulich's Department of Electrical and Software Engineering as Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Quantum Hardware Engineering.

Dr. Janitz explores the use of tiny magnetic moments--known as "spins"--associated with defects in diamonds as memory elements in quantum computing or atom-sized quantum sensors. During her graduate studies at McGill, she characterized a novel diamond defect and explored its application for building quantum networks. Specifically, she developed optical resonators for enhancing fluorescence emission, which can carry quantum information over long distances. As a postdoctoral researcher at ETH, Dr. Janitz used individual spins as magnetic-field sensors to study few-molecule samples of DNA. There, she developed a technique for discriminating between different geometries -- known as conformations -- of otherwise identical molecules by their unique magnetic signatures. This represents a key step towards structural determination, which is critical for understanding molecular interactions and function. Moving forward, Dr. Janitz will combine this expertise to fabricate and characterize novel defect centers with optimal properties for building quantum technologies. In addition, her lab will pursue a milestone in diamond-based quantum sensing: detecting individual nuclear spins in a single molecule. Such ground-breaking developments are poised to greatly impact quantum sensing and quantum networking implementations based on diamond defects.