Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born 11 October 1965), known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and

quantum information Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both ...

theory. He is the recipient of the 2006

Prince of Asturias Award The Princess of Asturias Awards ( es, Premios Princesa de Asturias, links=no, ast, Premios Princesa d'Asturies, links=no), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 ( es, Premios Príncipe de Asturias, links=no), are a series of a ...

in technical and scientific research.

Career

Cirac graduated from the

Complutense University of Madrid The Complutense University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; UCM, links=no, ''Universidad de Madrid'', ''Universidad Central de Madrid''; la, Universitas Complutensis Matritensis, links=no) is a public research university loc ...

in 1988 and moved to the United States in 1991 to work as a postdoctoral scientist with

Peter Zoller Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

in the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

. Between 1991 and 1996, he was teaching physics in the Ciudad Real Faculty of Chemistry, University of Castilla-La Mancha. In 1996, Cirac became professor in the Institut für Theoretische Physik in Innsbruck, Austria, and in 2001 he became a director of the

Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics (abbreviation: MPQ; german: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik) is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany. The institute is located in Garching, Germany, ...

in Garching, Germany, where he heads the Theory Division. At the same time, he was appointed

honorary professor Honorary titles (professor, reader, lecturer) in academia may be conferred on persons in recognition of contributions by a non-employee or by an employee beyond regular duties. This practice primarily exists in the UK and Germany, as well as in m ...

at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied science, applied and Natural sci ...

. He is a distinguished visiting professor and research advisor at

ICFO ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences ( Catalan:Institut de Ciències Fotòniques) (Spanish: Instituto de Ciencias Fotónicas) is a research center devoted to the science and technology of light. Located in Castelldefels ( Barcelona, Spain ...

– the Institute of Photonic Sciences in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

since its foundation in 2002. He has been a member of research teams at the universities of

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

UCSB The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, city, Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Glouces ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, CEA/Saclay,

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

. His research is focused on quantum optics, the quantum theory of information and quantum many-body physics. According to his theories,

quantum computing Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...

will revolutionize the information society and lead to much more efficient and secure communication of information. His joint work with Peter Zoller on ion trap quantum computation opened up the possibility of experimental quantum computation, and his joint work on optical lattices jumpstarted the field of quantum simulation. He has also made seminal contributions in the fields of quantum information theory, degenerated quantum gases, quantum optics, and renormalization group methods. As of 2017 Juan Ignacio Cirac has published more than 440 articles in the most prestigious journals and is one of the most cited authors in his fields of research. He has been named among others as a possible candidate to win the nobel prize in physics.

Other activities

Corporate boards

Telefónica Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadba ...

, member of the board of directors (since 2016)

Non-profit organizations

* Fundación La Caixa, member of the advisory council (since 2015) * ''

Annalen der Physik ''Annalen der Physik'' (English: ''Annals of Physics'') is one of the oldest scientific journals on physics; it has been published since 1799. The journal publishes original, peer-reviewed papers on experimental, theoretical, applied, and mathe ...

'', member of the advisory board (since 2012) * Fundación BBVA, member of the scientific committee (since 2010)

Honors and awards

Ignacio Cirac has been granted multiple awards, notable ones being the 2006

, the

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...

in the Basic Sciences category ''ex aequo'' with

, and

The Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...

's 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics (jointly with David J. Wineland and

). He was awarded the

Wolf Prize in Physics The Wolf Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Arts ...

with Peter Zoller in 2013. In 2018 he received the Max Planck Medal of the

German Physical Society The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. The DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 60,547, as of 2019, making it the largest physics society in the world. It holds an annual conference () and multiple ...

and the Micius Quantum Prize. He was elected a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its mot ...

in 2003. In 2017 he became a member of the

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founde ...

References

External links

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards
Lectures and panels
Video of panel discussion, "Harnessing Quantum Physics"
with Ignacio Cirac,

Michele Mosca Michele Mosca is co-founder and deputy director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, researcher and founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and professor of mathematics in the departmen ...

Avi Wigderson Avi Wigderson ( he, אבי ויגדרזון; born 9 September 1956) is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist. He is the Herbert H. Maass Professor in the school of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jerse ...

Daniel Gottesman Daniel Gottesman is a physicist, known for his work regarding quantum error correction, in particular the invention of the stabilizer formalism for quantum error-correcting codes, and the Gottesman–Knill theorem. He is a faculty member at the ...

Peter Shor Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959) is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT. He is known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially f ...

and

Dorit Aharonov Dorit Aharonov ( he, דורית אהרונוב; born 1970) is an Israeli computer scientist specializing in quantum computing. Aharonov graduated from Weizmann Institute of Science with an MSc in Physics. She received her doctorate for Comput ...

, at the Quantum to Cosmos festival * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cirac Sasturain, Juan Ignacio 1965 births Living people People from Manresa Complutense University of Madrid alumni Quantum physicists Optical physicists Technical University of Munich faculty Wolf Prize in Physics laureates Winners of the Max Planck Medal Recipients of Princess of Asturias Awards 20th-century Spanish physicists 21st-century Spanish physicists Quantum information scientists Directors of Telefónica Fellows of the American Physical Society Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Max Planck Institute directors