Nicole Yunger Halpern

Nicole Yunger Halpern is a theoretical physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Maryland. Nicole completed her PhD at Caltech, winning the international Ilya Prigogine Prize for a thermodynamics thesis. While an ITAMP Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, she won the International Quantum Technology Emerging Researcher Award. Other scientific accolades include the US ASPIRE Prize, the Mary Somerville Medal, the Hermann Weyl Prize, the Katharine B. Gebbie Young Scientist Award, and inclusion in the Science News “Ten to Watch” list of early- and mid-career scientists. Nicole re-envisions 19th-century thermodynamics for the 21st century, using quantum information theory. She has dubbed this research “quantum steampunk,” after the steampunk genre of art and literature that juxtaposes Victorian settings with futuristic technologies. She described this field in a book for the general public, Quantum Steampunk: The Physics of Yesterday’s Tomorrow, which won the PROSE Award for Popular Science and Mathematics. Nicole also co-leads the Maryland Quantum-Thermodynamics Hub.

Go here to view Yunger Halpern's academic publications on Google Scholar. Her blog can be found here.