Assistant Professor of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Abstract：
Prof. Gyu-Boong Jo is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). After receiving his Bachelor degree in physics and mathematics from the Seoul National University, he continued his PhD in atomic physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was awarded the Samsung graduate fellowship in 2004-2009. He then joined UC Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow. He received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award by the Association of Korean Physicist in America in 2013 and the Croucher Innovation Award in 2016.
Prof. Jo’s main research area focuses on the exploration of interfaces between Atomic Molecular Op- tical (AMO) physics and condensed-matter physics with an aim to implement quantum simulation of strongly correlated quantum system. For this purpose, his team creates synthetic quantum materials using ultracold atoms around 100 billionth of 1 Kelvin above the absolute zero temperature. At such low temperature, ultracold atoms mimic the behaviour of the electrons in real material by which his team aims to understand the interplay between symmetry, topology and strong correlations in materials and eventually hope to design an unprecedented phase of matter in the synthetic system. Prof. Jo has made major discoveries including the finding of the non-classical many-body quantum state preserving long coherence time in ultra-cold atoms, and the realization of a Kagome pattern for ultra-cold atoms. Prof. Jo’s discoveries have inspired many new research projects and opened a plethora of possibilities in information storage, processing, and better inertial sensors like gravimeters.