About

After earning his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, Raffi Budakian was a visiting scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Centre.

The World Technology Network awarded him the World Technology Award in 2005 for his work in the detection and manipulation of electron spins. That same year Budakian joined the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

Budakian joined the Institute of Quantum Computing (IQC) as the University of Waterloo Endowed Chair in Nanotechnology in Waterloo’s Physics and Astronomy Department. His work in the past decade has focused on developing the experimental tools for ultra sensitive detection of electron and nuclear spins. At IQC, he will explore applying these tools to address fundamental questions ranging from biology to quantum information.

Teaching

Raffi Budakian teaches several courses at the University of Waterloo. Some of them are listed below:

• PHYS 342: Electricity and Magnetism: Electric and magnetic fields in media, auxiliary fields, Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic waves, electric and magnetic properties of matter.


• PHYS 234: Background of quantum physics. Introduction to formalism of quantum physics. Introduction to operators. Quantization, waves and particles. The uncertainty principle. The Schroedinger equation for one-dimensional problems: bound states in square wells. Harmonic oscillator; transmission through barriers.

Awards and Honors

• 2014, Appointed as the University of Waterloo Endowed Chair in Nanotechnology
• 2013, John Bardeen Faculty Scholar
• 2010, University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study Fellow
• 2005, World Technology Award, World Technology Network, presented for Single Spin Detection by Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy

Lectures and Talks

Here are a few talks by Raffi Budakian in various conferences.

Raffi Budakian's talk at The Zurich Physics Colloquium in November 2023.