Rainer Blatt

Information

Biography

Rainer Blatt studied physics at the University of Mainz, where he also received his PhD. He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow with John L. Hall (Nobel Prize 2005) in Boulder, Colorado, on laser cooling of atomic beams, and later as a research associate with P. E. Toschek at the University of Hamburg, conducting pioneering experiments with single trapped ions. In 1994 he became Professor of Physics at the University of Göttingen, and in 1995 he accepted a Chair in Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck, where he established one of the world’s leading research programs on trapped-ion quantum technologies. His group employs Paul traps for quantum computing, quantum simulation, and quantum metrology. Since 2003, he has also served as Research Director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Rainer Blatt is co-founder of Alpine Quantum Technologies (AQT), developing commercial trapped-ion quantum computers, and he served from 2021–2023 as Scientific Manager and Coordinator of the Munich Quantum Valley initiative. For his contributions to quantum information science, he has received numerous awards, including the ÖAW Schrödinger Prize (2006), the DPG Stern–Gerlach Medal (2012), the John Stewart Bell Prize (2015), and the Micius Quantum Prize (2018). He is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.