Bio
David J. Dean is the Principal Investigator and Director of the Quantum Science Center, a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center. The QSC incorporates research across an integrated QIS innovation chain that includes fundamental science R&D, device development, prototyping of new quantum devices and sensors, and a wide range of quantum computing and sensing applications in materials science and the fundamental science of dark matter detection.
The QSC’s goal is to overcome key roadblocks in quantum state resilience, controllability,
and ultimately scalability of quantum technologies. In order to accomplish this, the Center will address the fragility of quantum states through the design of new topological materials for QIS, thereby accelerating quantum information processing; develop algorithms and software for computation and sensing with current and future QIS hardware in order to predict new physical and chemical behaviors; and design new quantum devices and sensors to detect dark matter and topological quasiparticles, creating new capabilities to quantify the previously unmeasurable.
Dean leads a tremendous team of scientists and engineers from four national laboratories, three industrial partners, and nine universities (see http://qscience.org for further details).
He has made numerous fundamental contributions to nuclear many-body theory, including developments of quantum Monte Carlo methods for the investigations of thermal properties of finite nuclei and their interactions in stellar environments, and coupled-cluster theory developments applied to very neutron rich medium mass-nuclei. He and colleagues performed the first ever quantum computing calculation of a nucleus.
Prior to his appointment as QSC Director, Dean was the Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences at ORNL (2018-2020), where he provided strategic direction aimed at generating premier scientific results and providing staff leadership for a Directorate with a broad research portfolio in materials, chemistry, fundamental physics and isotope research and production. He was the ORNL Physics Division director from 2011-2018, and concurrently led the ORNL Isotope Program during a period of tremendous growth. Prior to leading the Physics Division, Dean spent spent two years (2009-2011) in Washington, D.C. as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Science, and two years as the Director of Institutional Planning at ORNL (2007-2009).
Dean came to the Laboratory in 1995 as a Wigner Fellow after a post-doctoral fellowship at Caltech. His Ph.D. is from Vanderbilt University and his B.Sc. is from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Dean is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics (London), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.