Congratulations to Mark Friesen on his promotion to Distinguished Scientist! The distinguished title is the highest title available to an academic staff member at UW–Madison.
Friesen joined the physics department in 2004 as an associate scientist, and has been with UW–Madison since 1998, when he began a postdoc in the Materials Sciences and Engineering department. His main research effort at UW–Madison has been related to silicon quantum dot quantum computing, in collaboration with physics professors Mark Eriksson, Sue Coppersmith, Bob Joynt, Maxim Vavilov, and others.
Friesen says his most important achievement in the department is serving as a research advisor: In 16 years with UW–Madison physics, he has advised or co-advised six postdocs, 11 Ph.D. theses, four current Ph.D. students, two M.S. theses, and several undergraduate research projects. He also has 123 peer-reviewed publications and five U.S. patents, and serves as a consultant for ColdQuanta, a quantum computing company.
“Mark is known around the world for his expertise in semiconductor-based quantum computing,” Mark Eriksson says. “He is especially well known for his calculations on how the band structure in silicon interacts with interfaces to determine the quantum states for electrons in silicon-based quantum devices.”
Congrats, Mark Friesen, on this well-deserved honor!