Christopher Monroe, a JQI Fellow, Distinguished University Professor, and Bice Seci-Zorn Professor in the Department of Physics at UMD, has received the 2020 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics.

The award, which has been sponsored by the Physics of Quantum Electronics (PQE) conference since 1998, annually honors researchers who have made “outstanding contributions” to the study of lasers and their interaction with matter. Monroe, who is an expert in trapping atomic ions and harnessing them to process information, shares this year’s Lamb Award with Stephen E. Harris of Stanford University and Alexei Sokolov of Texas A&M University.

The three winners will be honored at the next PQE conference, which will be held January 5-10, 2020 in Snowbird, Utah.