Chetan Nayak

Chetan Nayak is an American physicist and distinguished professor specializing in condensed matter physics and quantum computing. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Nayak is currently a Technical Fellow at Microsoft and a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

His research focuses on topological phases of matter, high-temperature superconductivity, the quantum Hall effect, and periodically-driven quantum systems.

 Early life and education 
Nayak grew up in New York City, graduating from Stuyvesant High School in 1988. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1992 and completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1996, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at UCSB.

Career
Nayak taught at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1997 to 2006 before joining UCSB in 2007. He also held a visiting professorship at Nihon University in 2002.

In 2005, Nayak joined Microsoft and became Principal Research Manager of Microsoft Station Q in 2014. He now leads the quantum hardware division and was named a Technical Fellow in 2023.

 Research 
Nayak's work on topological phases of matter underpins fault-tolerant quantum computation. His 1996 collaboration with Frank Wilczek on non-Abelian statistics and Majorana zero modes is central to Microsoft's quantum architecture. He co-proposed hidden order in high-temperature superconductors in 2000 and initiated efforts for a topological quantum computer in 2005. In 2016, he co-predicted "time crystals" in periodically-driven systems.

 Recognition and awards 
Nayak is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has received numerous honors, including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and the NSF Early Career Award.

References

Category:American physicists
Category:Living people
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)