Caltech president, a pioneer in quantum physics, to headline April Presidential Lecture Series event

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Caltech president and pioneering physicist Thomas Rosenbaum, an expert in the promising field of quantum physics, will join Purdue University President Mung Chiang in April for a conversation as part of the Presidential Lecture Series.

The Purdue appearance by Rosenbaum, also the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and Professor of Physics at Caltech, is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 10, in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. The event, titled “A Second Quantum Revolution: Harnessing Quantum Technology for the Future,” is free and open to the public, but a general admission ticket will be required.

“President Rosenbaum is both a brilliant scholar and a long-standing leader in American higher education,” Chiang said. “His own research in quantum physics is pioneering and his leading Caltech since 2014 has been highly impactful. Purdue’s Presidential Lecture Series continues to invite leaders from across academia, industry, government, sports and the arts, and we look forward to an intellectually exciting conversation with President Rosenbaum about science and university research.”

As a field of study, quantum physics traces its roots to the late 1800s and early 1900s from a series of atomic experiments that didn’t make sense in the context of classical physics. From living cells to black holes, nature is built on quantum physics, which is the study of the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy.

Individually and collectively, atoms and subatomic particles obey the rules of quantum physics — behaving far differently than objects at the scale of humans’ everyday perception. And harnessing the power of quantum physics has given rise to new technologies — both for applications used today in everything from semiconductor chips and lasers as well as future products centering around the development of quantum computing.

Rosenbaum’s research expertise is on the quantum mechanical nature of materials. This field of physics studies electronic, magnetic and optical materials at the atomic level, which are best observed at temperatures near absolute zero.

Before his appointment as the ninth president at the California Institute of Technology in 2014, Rosenbaum served as vice president for research and for Argonne National Laboratory as well as provost at the University of Chicago. He has conducted research at Bell Laboratories, IBM Watson Research Center and the University of Chicago.

During Rosenbaum’s impressive academic career, he has mentored more than 40 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, including current Purdue physics and astronomy professor Arnab Banerjee when he was pursuing his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Chicago more than a decade ago.

Rosenbaum is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He serves as current board chair of the Society for Science, and competed in the organization’s Science Talent Search program during the early 1970s.

Rosenbaum received his bachelor’s degree in physics with honors from Harvard University and a master’s degree and PhD in physics from Princeton University.

About the Presidential Lecture Series

Launched in 2014 by then-Purdue President Mitch Daniels and continued by President Mung Chiang, the Presidential Lecture Series exposes Purdue students and the broader community to inspiring ideas, courageous leadership, and models of civic engagement and civil discourse. The Presidential Lecture Series has had over 40 guests of many viewpoints and perspectives and hosted some of the great intellectual, business and civic leaders of our time. As one of the world’s premier centers of scholarly leadership, Purdue is — appropriately and necessarily — a regular venue for great thinkers across a wide variety of disciplines.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.