Birgitta Whaley

K. Birgitta Whaley is Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and co-Director of the Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center. Whaley holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Hebrew University Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University.  Whaley's research lies at the interface between quantum physics and chemistry and biology. Her work is broadly focused on quantum information and quantum computation, quantum control and simulation of complex quantum systems, with particular focus on implementation of quantum information processing, and on quantum effects in biological systems.  Prof. Whaley is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the International Academy of Molecular Quantum Science.  She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, as well as recipient of awards from Bergmann, Sloan, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundations, and senior Fellowships at the Miller Institute (Berkeley) and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin.

Research in Professor Whaley's group focuses on understanding and manipulating quantum dynamics of atoms, molecules and nanomaterials in complex environments to explore fundamental issues in quantum behavior.