Rate My Professor Sophia Economou

Sophia Economou is a professor of physics in the Virginia Tech College of Science, holder of the T. Marshall Hahn Chair in Physics, and director of the university's Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Crete and her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, San Diego. Economou joined Virginia Tech in 2015, where she received the William E. Hassinger Jr. Senior Faculty Fellowship in Physics in 2019 to support her teaching and research. Her career includes leading the establishment of a cross-disciplinary quantum information science program at the university, developing three new courses in quantum information technologies and quantum optics, and spearheading the creation of a minor in quantum science and engineering.

Economou's research examines theoretical quantum information science, with interests in quantum optics, condensed matter theory, quantum information processing, spin physics in semiconductors, quantum control and logic gate design, spin-mechanics, and protocols for entangled photonic states from solid-state emitters. She directs an active research group of more than 10 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and has authored over 110 peer-reviewed publications, accumulating more than 5,500 citations. Key works include 'An adaptive variational algorithm for exact molecular simulations on a quantum computer' (Nature Communications, 2019) and contributions to quantum simulators architectures (PRX Quantum, 2021). She has delivered more than 100 invited or keynote presentations and secured over $5 million in federal funding as principal or co-principal investigator on 20 grants from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Army Research Office, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Economou is a member of the DOE's Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage and serves as vice chair of the American Physical Society's Division of Quantum Information. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for advancements in quantum optimization methods, protocols for photonic resource states, efficient quantum control schemes for spins and nuclei, and quantum curricula for young researchers.