John Preskill
Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology
John Preskill is the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and Director of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech. Preskill received his Ph.D. in physics in 1980 from Harvard, and joined the Caltech faculty in 1983. Preskill began his career in particle physics and cosmology, but now his main research area is quantum information science.
He's interested in how to build and use quantum computers, and in how our deepening understanding of quantum information can illuminate issues in fundamental physics. Preskill is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a two-time recipient of the Associated Students of Caltech Teaching Award. He has mentored more than 60 Ph.D. students and more than 60 postdoctoral scholars at Caltech, many of whom are now leaders in their research areas.