Rate My Professor Nicolas Menicucci

Professor Nicolas Menicucci is a Professor of Theoretical Physics in the School of Science at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, holding this position since 1 January 2023. Previously, he served as Associate Professor from 2019 and Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer from September 2015. His academic career includes an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Senior Research Fellowship and DECRA Research Fellowship at the University of Sydney School of Physics from 2012 to 2015, a Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Fellowship at the same institution from 2011 to 2012, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics from 2008 to 2011. Menicucci earned his PhD in Physics from Princeton University in 2008, with a dissertation titled Studies in Quantum Information Theory supervised by Shivaji Sondhi at Princeton and Michael Nielsen and Gerard Milburn at the University of Queensland. He holds a BS in Physics with honors from the University of New Mexico in 2002, graduating summa cum laude.

Menicucci's research focuses on quantum optics, continuous-variable cluster states for quantum computing, relativistic quantum information, quantum computation, and quantum information theory. He is a pioneer in theoretical developments enabling scalable optical quantum computing using continuous-variable cluster states, with contributions underpinning experimental breakthroughs such as a 1-million-mode cluster state. His Google Scholar profile lists over 9,000 citations. Key publications include Universal Quantum Computation with Continuous-Variable Cluster States (Physical Review Letters, 2006; 1,077 citations), Fault-tolerant measurement-based quantum computing with continuous-variable cluster states (Physical Review Letters, 2014; 505 citations), Ultra-large-scale continuous-variable cluster states multiplexed in the time domain (Nature Photonics, 2013; 703 citations), Experimental realization of multipartite entanglement of 60 modes of the quantum optical frequency comb (Physical Review Letters, 2014; 621 citations), and Generation of time-domain-multiplexed two-dimensional cluster state (Science, 2019; 610 citations). He has received the Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellowship at RMIT (less than 2% success rate), ARC DECRA Fellowship, Perimeter Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship, U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and U.S. Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Menicucci serves as Continuous-Variable Quantum Technology Program Manager at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems and Council Member of the International Society of Relativistic Quantum Information.