My research interests lie at the intersection of atomic physics and quantum information, where collections of cold, trapped ions can serve as well-isolated systems for studying quantum many-body physics or as a new computational resource for solving classically intractable problems. Each trapped ion encodes a quantum spin, and lasers provide the "connections" to couple the spins together. I am particularly interested to investigate new ion trap geometries and methods to realize 2D and 3D spin lattices, which can exhibit important physics that is inaccessible to the current 1D systems. Scaling these systems to hundreds of coupled spins (and beyond) will likely require construction of cryogenic traps, which will provide the ions exquisite isolation from their background environments.
