Nathan Lacroix wins DQI Best Thesis Award at APS Global Physics Summit 2026
This year's award from the Division of Quantum Information of the American Physical Society recognised the quality and significance of the doctoral research carried out by ETH Zurich alumnus Dr Nathan Lacroix, who completed his PhD in the group of Professor Andreas Wallraff.
The DQI Best Thesis Award celebrates doctoral research "of outstanding quality and achievement in quantum information science and technology". Earlier this month, the five shortlisted candidates presented their thesis work during a special session at the APS Global Physics Summit in Denver, Colorado. All speakers made impressive presentations; a committee of experts selected Lacroix as the recipient of the award.
Lacroix defended his thesis in April 2025. His doctoral research was carried out in the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich and centred on experimental quantum error correction with superconducting circuits, one of the most promising platforms for quantum information processing. The achievements presented in Lacroix's thesis and award talk include the demonstration of repeated quantum error correction in a surface code with superconducting qubits, the realisation of a new universal leakage reduction unit to mitigate one of the primary error sources limiting experimental performance, and the demonstration of error-corrected logical operations using colour code qubits.
"I'm deeply honoured to receive this award from the APS," says Lacroix. "Tackling the challenges of implementing surface and colour codes was intense but very fulfilling. I'm incredibly grateful to Professor Wallraff and the entire team at ETH Zurich for their support. It's an exciting time to see the field make such rapid progress in quantum error correction, and I look forward to continuing my work to make practical quantum computers a reality in my new role at Google Quantum AI." Wallraff adds, "realising fault-tolerant quantum computers with quantum error correction is an extremely dynamic area of research in quantum information science. We're excited to see that the importance of the work done by Nathan and our whole team at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute is recognised by this prestigious award."
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