From climbing mountains in the Cascades and South America to being a U.S. Science Envoy building relationships internationally in quantum, Professor Prineha Narang strives to be a role model for the next generation for scientists and engineers. So, a slightly belated congratulations to Professor Narang on her promotion to full professor and appointment as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, both effective July 1, 2023.
The NarangLab’s work was featured in a video by APS earlier this year: Quantum Trailblazers.
The team is dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of quantum phenomena, from research to models to products. With the talented students, postdoctoral scholars and collaborators at UCLA, they are propelling their scientific pursuit forward, and driving groundbreaking research that is not only advancing theoretical knowledge in quantum science and engineering but also paving the way for practical applications.
At UCLA, her group has branched into new areas of research, with support from the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, by taking quantum sensing to new fields. For example, they are looking at how to use a network of quantum sensors – technology that is sensitive to changes in the environment – to detect particulates in the air, giving insight into air quality.
Narang’s work has been recognized by many awards and special designations, including the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship in Physics, a Maria Goeppert Mayer Award from the American Physical Society, 2022 Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award from the Materials Research Society, Mildred Dresselhaus Prize, Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Max Planck Award from the Max Planck Society, and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics all in 2021, an NSF CAREER Award in 2020, being named a Moore Inventor Fellow by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a Top Innovator by MIT Tech Review (MIT TR35).
Her work goes from fundamental discoveries to translating technologies including as the Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Aliro Quantum, advisory roles at major companies, and positions at ScienceCast and Activate Inc. She recently discussed what it would take to scale quantum technologies at a recent Open Innovation Workshop at Applied Materials.
Her continued service to the science community includes chairing the Gordon Conference on Ultrafast and Cooperative Phenomena (2024-), Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring Meeting (2022) and the MRS-Kavli Foundation Future of Materials Workshop: Computational Materials Science (2021), organizing APS, Optica (OSA), and SPIE symposia, and a leadership role in APS’ Division of Materials Physics. Narang is an Associate Editor at ACS Nano of the American Chemical Society, an Associate Editor at Applied Physics Letters of the American Institute of Physics, and on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Nano Letters and Advanced Photonics. In 2023 she was elected to the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and appointed to the Science Advisory Council of arXiv, open-access repository of electronic preprints used by the science community.
Outside of science, she is an avid runner and pursuing her mountaineering journey. Time spent outdoors is important to her and here’s a Faculty Spotlight highlighting how she spends time outside the lab, an article by Physics World, and an article by the Moore Foundation on her work “Beyond the Lab“.
