Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize Awarded to Prof. Andrew Cleland

The Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize is awarded every three years to a scientist with outstanding contributions to low temperature physics and related fields. 

This year the prize goes to Professor Andrew Cleland from the University of Chicago for his pioneering research into micromechanical devices and superconducting qubits with applications for quantum information and quantum sensing. 

Prof. Cleland has made several prominent contributions to the low-temperature study of quantum phenomena. His achievements include demonstrating the preparation of Fock states and arbitrary photon superposition states in superconducting resonators, early work in modern nanomechanical devices, and being one of the first to integrate nano- and micromechanical devices with qubits.

In 2010, he achieved what Science magazine dubbed the “Breakthrough of the Year” by being the first to observe and prepare the quantum ground state and nonclassical states in a moving object. 

Prof. Cleland earned his PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 and served on the UC Santa Barbara faculty from 1997 to 2014. Since then, he has been a professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago.

Beyond scientific merit, Prof. Cleland’s impact is felt across the low-temperature community. He served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the European Microkelvin Platform and the Finnish Center of Excellence in Low Temperature Quantum Phenomena and Devices. He is a former chair of the Division of Quantum Information of APS and a fellow of both the APS and the AAAS. 

The Olli V. Lounasmaa Prize bears the name of the founder of the Low Temperature Laboratory. Professor Lounasmaa started the Lab in 1965 at the Helsinki University of Technology, which has since morphed to Aalto University. The Low Temperature Laboratory is a globally significant research infrastructure for low-temperature physics. As part of OtaNano, Finland’s national research infrastructure for nano-, micro- and quantum technologies, its facilities are available for use by researchers, students and companies. 

The Olli V. Lounasmaa Prize Fund receives endowment from Bluefors, a 2008 spin-off company from the Low Temperature Laboratory. The 2025 prize is presented at the 30th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics (LT30) in Bilbao, Spain in August.

Learn more about the prize and the previous winners on Aalto University’s website.