Ian Alexander Walmsley is Provost of

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

where he is also Chair of Experimental Physics. He was previously pro-vice-chancellor for research and Hooke Professor of Experimental Physics at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, and a professorial fellow at

St Hugh's College, Oxford St Hugh's College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a ...

. He is also director of the NQIT (Networked Quantum Information Technologies) hub within the UK National Quantum Technology Programme, which is led by the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. He will return to Oxford from October 2025 as Director of the Oxford Quantum Institute. Walmsley was educated at

, and The Institute of Optics,

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

. He received the Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science in 2011 and was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 2012 for his contributions to

quantum optics Quantum optics is a branch of atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum chemistry that studies the behavior of photons (individual quanta of light). It includes the study of the particle-like properties of photons and their interaction ...

and ultrafast optics, including his development of the

spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction In ultrafast optics, spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER) is an ultrashort pulse measurement technique originally developed by Chris Iaconis and Ian Walmsley. The basics SPIDER is an interferometric ultr ...

(SPIDER) technique. In March 2018 it was announced that Walmsley had been appointed provost of

, succeeding James Stirling on 1 September 2018. In October 2019, Walmsley co-founde
ORCA Computing
to undertake

Quantum Computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...

in Optical Fibre through the use of quantum memory.

References

External links

Ultrafast quantum optics and optical metrology
Research home page at Oxford Living people British physicists Provosts of Imperial College London Fellows of St Hugh's College, Oxford Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Optica (society) Alumni of Imperial College London University of Rochester alumni British optical physicists 1960 births Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the American Physical Society {{ImperialCollege-stub