Robert Schoelkopf is the Sterling Professor of Applied Physics and Physics at Yale University, and the Founding Director of the Yale Quantum Institute. His research focuses on the development of superconducting devices for quantum information processing, which are leading to revolutionary advances in computing. He and his collaborators at Yale founded the field of circuit quantum electrodynamics and have produced many firsts in the field of solid-state quantum computing, including the development of the transmon qubit, a “quantum bus” for information, and the first demonstrations of quantum algorithms and quantum error correction with integrated circuits.
Schoelkopf, who came to Yale as a postdoctoral researcher in 1995, joined the faculty in 1998, becoming a full professor in 2003. In 2015, he and his colleagues founded Quantum Circuits, Inc., a venture-backed startup in New Haven working to build the world’s first useful quantum computers. Quantum Circuits was acquired by DWave Systems in January of 2026.
Professor Schoelkopf’s work has been recognized with several honors and awards, including the Joseph F. Keithley Award of the American Physical Society (2009), the John Stewart Bell Prize (2013, with Michel Devoret ) for fundamental and pioneering experimental advances in superconducting qubits, the Fritz London Memorial Prize for Low Temperature Physics (2014, with Devoret and John Martinis), the Max Planck Forschungspreis (2014), the CT Medal of Science (2017), and the National Academy of Science’s Comstock Prize in Physics (with Devoret). Professor Schoelkopf is a member of the National Academy of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.