Gregorz Mazur arrived at UCSB in January after serving as a lecturer in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford and spending nearly two years in industry after serving as a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Institute for Quantum Computing and Quantum Internet (QuTech) in the Netherlands. His recent work has involved developing new material systems, as well as measuring and fabricating techniques to realize solid-state topological (p-wave) superconductors.

“UCSB offers a unique environment for people who are working at the intersection of semiconductors, materials science, mesoscopic physics, and quantum computing,” Mazur says in describing what brought him to campus. “It not only hosts the world-famous Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, which gives faculty a chance to interact with the best theorists from the entire world, but the College of Engineering itself is home to the world-class Nanofabrication Facility, which engages local industries and enables researchers to work at the cutting edge of modern physics and quantum technologies. The importance of this cannot be overstated, as many places around the world aspire to having a similar ecosystem; UCSB is among the few that succeed. Finally, it's really hard to find a better place for somebody like me, who works on quantum hardware, with both Google Quantum AI and Microsoft Station Q having their headquarters in Goleta.”

Mazur describes his research as lying at the intersection of experimental condensed-matter physics and materials science, where, he says, “I'm trying to engineer phases of matter that are otherwise difficult to find in nature or whose existence is obscured by other phenomena. Some of those phases of matter are particularly exciting, because they could, in principle, allow for quantum bits that are protected from decoherence and errors at the hardware level.”

He says he is excited about working with his new UCSB colleagues as he focuses his research on germanium/silicon-germanium (SiGe) quantum wells, which are compatible with modern industrial semiconductor processing and hold a promise of bringing quantum devices to scale. “I'm especially looking forward to working with [materials professors] Chris Palmstrøm and Susanne Stemmer on engineering these new material systems, as well as bringing my expertise to the platforms they're pursuing,” he says. “I'm also keen to engage with [materials professor and Institute for Energy Efficiency director] Steve DenBaars to set up a SiGe growth effort here at UCSB. I'm also looking forward to engaging with [fellow new faculty member] Erez Berg on the theory of topological quantum devices. My hope is to stay connected, too, with my colleagues from the Physics Department, Professor Andrea Young and [new Nobel laureate] Michel Devoret. Finally, it's hard to overstate the role of shared facilities such as the low-temperature lab in the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) characterization center, which allows access to world-class electron microscopy. 

Mazur finds excitement in the relative youth of the global quantum enterprise. “Quantum is still young enough that the next big leap might come not from a product roadmap, but from a lab notebook,” he notes. “We don’t yet have the quantum equivalent of the transistor — a universally accepted building block that’s scalable, manufacturable, and robust across many use cases. And that’s exactly why academic research still matters so much. Universities are set up to explore ideas that look strange at first, to take technical risks, and to follow results wherever they lead.
“We’ve already seen how surprising the field can be,” he continues. “Platforms that were once considered niche can suddenly show unexpected advantages, sometimes in scaling, sometimes in control, sometimes in the path to error correction. That’s a reminder that we shouldn’t assume that the ‘winning’ architecture is already obvious. The most valuable breakthroughs often come from people asking fundamental questions that don’t fit neatly into a short-term deliverable. In that sense, I think it’s entirely plausible that the ‘quantum transistor’ — the key primitive that makes large-scale systems feel inevitable — hasn’t been found yet, and could still emerge from university research.”

Mazur is also keenly interested in the link between academia and industry. “I’m genuinely excited by what industry is doing,” he says. “Industrial teams are turning prototypes into engineered systems to improve fabrication, packaging, control stacks, calibration, and reliability, and, crucially, holding performance accountable with rigorous benchmarks. That kind of disciplined iteration is essential, because even the best scientific idea becomes transformative only when it can be built and operated at scale. The most encouraging picture, to me, is the combination of academia expanding the frontier of what’s possible, and industry rapidly converting the most compelling ideas into platforms we can test, compare, and, ultimately, use.”