Onur Hosten (Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor) / since 1. June 2018
Onur received his PhD from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under the supervision of Paul Kwiat. He was a postdoctoral scholar and then a staff scientist at Stanford University in the group of Mark Kasevich. He joined IST Austria as an Assistant Professor in 2018, starting the experimental group ‘Quantum Sensing with atoms and Light’.
Career
since 2018 Assistant Professor, Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)
2015 – 2017 Research Associate, Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA
2010 – 2015 Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University , Palo Alto, USA
2010 PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Postdocs
Teodor Strömberg (Postdoc) / since 15. May 2024
Teodor carried out his PhD at the University of Vienna in Philip Walther’s group, where he worked on the generation and manipulation of single-photon states for performing quantum information tasks. He received his MSc in Engineering Physics from LTH in Sweden, writing his thesis on the topic of laser stabilization using slow-light cavities. As a member of the Hosten lab, Teodor will work on realising entanglement between an atomic ensemble and an optomechanical system for motional sensing.
Marta Maria Marchese (Postdoc) / since 15. March 2025
Marta received her PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in Mauro Paternostro’s group, where she studied the foundations of quantum mechanics using optomechanical systems. She then worked as a postdoc at the University of Sheffield on quantum-enhanced imaging for astronomical observations. With the Walter Benjamin fellowship at the University of Siegen, she focused on sensing weak forces with optomechanical detectors and explored the quantum-gravity interface by looking at the gravity-mediated entanglement. As a postdoc in Onur Hosten’s group, she is now investigating new quantum signatures of gravity using torsional pendulums in optical cavities.
PhD Students
Sebastian Wald (PhD student) / since 15. September 2019
Sebastian joined the group in 2019 to work on a project, where we want to realize an entanglement enhanced atom interferometer with spatially squeezed states. Previously he received his MSc in Physics at TU Wien in 2017. For his Master’s thesis, he joined the group of Jörg Schmiedmayer to investigate the longitudinal relaxation of NV– electron spin ensembles at cryogenic temperatures under the supervision of Johannes Majer.
Sofia Agafonova (PhD student) / since 1. August 2021
Sofia came to ISTA from Russia where she did her bachelor and master thesis at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Both works were devoted to compact sources of frequency combs based on optical microresonators. In Onur’s group, Sofia works in the field of quantum optomechanics where she designs, builds and characterizes mechanical pendulums, and (hopefully) brings them to the quantum regime and use them in sensing applications.
Umang Mishra (PhD student) / since 1. August 2022
Umang completed his undergraduate studies in Physics from New York University Abu Dhabi in 2021. His undergraduate thesis was on the development of a multilayer dielectric haloscope experiment for dark matter detection under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Arneodo. As part of the Hosten Lab, Umang will be working alongside Sofia on optomechanical cooling of milligram scale torsional pendulums and their applications in tests for fundamental physics.
Edward-Fulbright Gheorghita (PhD student) / since 1. August 2023
Edward joined this group in 2022 to work on the entanglement enhanced atom interferometer. Previously, he received his master’s degree from the University of Barcelona in Quantum Science and Technology where he worked on the theoretical development of one-axis twisting in nearest-neighboring quantum systems. In 2021, Edward received his bachelor’s degree from Belmont University in Nashville, TN
Alexei Gurchenko (PhD student) / since 1. August 2024
tba
Scientific Interns & visiting students
Josué Solórzano (Scientific intern) / 15. April 2025 – 14. April 2026
Josué completed his Bachelor’s degree in Nanotechnology at Yachay Tech University in Ecuador in 2024. For his thesis, he joined the Quantum Nano-optoelectronics (QNOE) Group at The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Spain, where he focused on studying Van der Waals heterostructures-based nanodevices for gas sensing applications. During his studies, he completed research internships at the University of Cambridge (UK), Blue Marble Space Institute of Sciences (USA), and The University of Havana (Cuba).