Ronald Walsworth

Walsworth earned a B.S. in physics from Duke University in 1984 and completed a  Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 1991.[2] He has been recognized for his contributions to science. In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. [3] He was a Distinguished Traveling Lecturer for the American Physical Society from 2002 to 2023. In 2005, he received the Francis M. Pipkin Award in Precision Measurements from the American Physical Society.[4] He also received the Smithsonian Institution Exceptional Service Award; the Duke University Faculty Scholar Award; and the NASA Group Achievement Award.

Since 2020, Walsworth has served as the Founding Director of the Quantum Technology Center at the University of Maryland;[5] and also as a Minta Martin Professor in the Department of Physics[6] and in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering[7] at the University of Maryland. He previously served as a Senior Physicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at Harvard University.

Walsworth has helped establish several startup companies.[8] In 2012, he co-founded Quantum Diamond Technologies, Inc. with Mikhail Lukin and others to develop biomedical diagnostic technology using nitrogen-vacancy diamond magnetic imaging.[9] In 2014, he co-founded Hyperfine with Matthew Rosen and Jonathan Rothberg to develop the world’s first portable human MRI instrument able to move to a patient’s bedside at the point of care.[10] [11] In 2020, he founded Quantum Catalyzer to perform quantum research and create new quantum technology startups;[12] one of these companies is QDM.IO, co-founded by Walsworth and Roger Fu,[13] which builds and sells quantum diamond microscopes (QDMs) for research and education.[14]