Prof. David Patterson earned his PhD at Harvard University. After running a small group at Harvard, he joined the UCSB physics faculty in fall 2017. When not in the lab, he can be found in the nearest machine shop, or enjoying the outdoors almost any way possible.
We are actively hiring! Look here to get involved.
Postdocs and project scientists
Aaron Calvin earned his PhD at Georgia Tech. Aaron joined in summer 2018 and brings his extensive ion trapping experience and good cheer to the lab.
Graduate students
Merrell Brzeczek joined the group in fall of 2021 after doing her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley. Merrell works on 3D printed ion traps in collaboration with Prof. Andrew Jayich’s group. Merrell is a InTriQATe NRT Fellow.
Samuel Kresch works on the ion trap. Joining the group initially as an undergraduate in the winter of 2022 he has stayed on the team for his doctoral studies. Sam is a InTriQATe NRT Fellow.
Paco Navarro joined the group in fall 2025 after completing his bachelors at Harvey Mudd College where he worked on biological physics, quantum information theory and won 1st place out of more than 75,000 contestants in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
Undergraduate students
- Desi Hawkins – Works on the microwave experiment.
- Keaton Cross – Building a quadrupole mass spectrometer.
- Nathan Burgner – Being a nice and helpful guy.
Former researchers
Postdocs:
- Mariyam Fatima – Visiting postdoc from Cologne, Germany.
Graduate Students:
- Lincoln Satterthwaite
- Worked on the microwave spectroscopy experiment. Now working as a research engineer in high energy physics at UCSB and SLAC.
- Zeyun Peng
- Worked on the ion trap.
- Scott Eierman
- Worked on the ion trap and now works as an engineer for ASML in San Diego.
- Greta Koumarianou
- Worked on the microwave spectroscopy experiment. Now is working on making fusion energy as a scientist at TAE Technologies in Irvine.
Undergraduate Students:
- Ulises Lopez
- Elijah Lane
- Daniel Sorensen – Now a PhD Student at CU Boulder / NIST
- Ben Riley – Now a PhD Student at Columbia
- Yael Brynjegard-Bialik – Now a PhD Student U of Arizona
- Billy Murphy – Now a Software Engineer
- Tristan Richmond
- RJ Sedlik – Now a PhD Student at UCSD
- Irene Wang – Now an Operator at SLAC
- Jerry Yan
- Ce Pei
- Simon Gan – Now a Software Engineer at Amazon
- Lia Yeh – Now a PhD Student at Oxford
- Luca Scharrer – Now a PhD Student at UChicago
- Matthew Capocci
- Kaelin Spencer – Now a Project Engineer at Experior Labs
- Dylan Finestone – Now a Scientist at HRL Laboratories
- Devin Thatcher – Now a PhD Student at Berkeley
Lab Technicians:
- James Stadler
