The Group

The group is led by Brendon W. Lovett

Post Docs

Kristín Arnardóttir

Kristín is a postdoc working on understanding and engineering dissipation in quantum devices. She is also working with the group of Jonathan Keeling. Her background is in strong light-matter coupling in both organic and inorganic systems. She is interested in open quantum systems in general, specifically beyond-mean-field approaches and how the scaling system sizes affect the physics of those systems. Kristín has a BSc from the University of Iceland, MSc from Stockholm University (Sweden) and did her PhD at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).


PhD Students

Gerald Fux

Gerald is a final year CM-CDT PhD student, jointly supervised by Brendon and Jonathan Keeling. He has recently submitted this thesis. His project was to extend a technique that was recently developed in the group to effectively simulate non-Markovian open quantum systems. He developed methods for simulating many-body open systems coupled to their environment, and optimal control of quantum systems. He also was the main developer of the OQuPy package


Alex Coates

Alex is a final year student, jointly supervised by Brendon and Erik Gauger at Heriot Watt. He is interested in energy transport through disordered systems and in particular how noise can help make transport more efficient.


Maria Popovic

Maria completed her Masters degree in Physics at the University of Milan, under the supervision of Prof. Bassano Vacchini. She graduated with highest honors. During her degree, her interest focused on the thermodynamics of open quantum systems. In particular, in her thesis she studied the effect that non-Markovian dynamics has on the entropy production rate and its relation with the second law of thermodynamics. Through this project she developed technical proficiency in modelling, characterising and simulating open quantum systems and quantum thermodynamics. She joined the QuSys team as a Ph.D candidate at Trinity College Dublin in August 2018.

She is working on developing methodology to cope with thermodynamics in non-Markovian settings in a project supervised jointly by Prof John Goold, Prof. Paul Eastham (TCD) and Dr Brendon Lovett at the University of St. Andrews.


Thibaut Lacroix

Thibaut is a fourth year PhD student jointly supervised by Brendon and Alex Chin (Sorbonne Université, Paris). His project revolves around looking at the consequences of the strong coupling of quantum systems to their environment and especially on its impact on energy transport. This problematic emerges from biological systems (e.g. photosynthesis in plants) where strong coupling seems to be central for explaining observed phenomenons.


Piper Fowler-Wright

Piper is a third year PhD student, jointly supervised by Brendon and Jonathan Keeling. He is interested in tensor network methods for the purpose of modelling of open quantum systems, in particular how cavity confinement can affect chemical kinetics.




Muhammad Zia

Zia is a second year PhD student. He completed his Masters at LUMS, Lahore. Before joining St Andrews, he worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant for two years. He has worked on understanding the dynamics of open quantum systems in the past, and will be pursuing the same during my PhD.

Roosmarijn de Wit

Roos is a first year PhD student supervised by Brendon Lovett and Alex Chin (Sorbonne Université in Paris). Her project is about space-time correlations in open quantum systems. In particular, she will focus on simulating experimental techniques such as transient absorption microscopy, in which the evolution of excitations in quantum system can be tracked in space and time, using tensor network methods. She is additionally interested in how such methods could be used to improve our understanding of biological processes such as photosynthesis and allostery.






Past Members

Dominic Gribben (PhD 2017-2021)

Dominic Rouse (PhD 2017-2021)

Conor Stevenson (PhD 2016-2020)

Aidan Strathearn (PhD 2015-2019)

Connor Grose (PhD 2015-2021)

Helen Cammack (PhD 2013-2018)

Christian Johansen (Visiting Scholar 2017-2018)

Peter Kirton (EPSRC Fellow 2015-2018)

Elliott Levi (PhD 2012-2016)

Giuseppe Pica (PhD 2011-2015, Post-doc 2015-16)

Elinor Irish (Post doc 2011-2014)

Rafa Gomez Bombarelli (Post doc 2012-2014)

Vishal Purohit (PhD 2011-2015)

Kieran Higgins (PhD 2010-2014)

Tom Close (PhD 2008-2012)

Yuting Ping (PhD 2009-2012)

Marcus Schaffry (PhD 2007-2011)

Erik Gauger (PhD 2006-2010)

Avinash Kolli (PhD 2006-2009)

Ahsan Nazir (PhD 2001-2004)