Lieven Vandersypen receives Antoni van Leeuwenhoek professorship

Lieven Vandersypen was born in the Flemish city of Leuven in 1972. Delft''s advisory appointments committee describe him as a very prominent scientist. "He has an impressive list of publications to his name, which already make him one of the most internationally influential scientists in his field. As a teacher, Dr Vandersypen inspires his students by conveying his own sense of wonder and fascination for his field. He has also made a committed contribution to the administrative sector both within TU Delft and beyond." He was recently accepted into the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Nature and Science
Since 2001, Dr Lieven Vandersypen has been working at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft. He originally graduated in mechanical engineering from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He is a pioneer in the construction of spin-based quantum computers. During his doctoral research at Stanford University, he came up with one of the first quantum calculations, still regarded as the most complex to date.

As a post-doctoral researcher, assistant professor and associate professor at TU Delft he has worked on breakthroughs such as the reading out and control of individual electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots. He is also working on graphene, a layer of graphite one atom thick, in which electrons behave as relativistic particles. He has seven publications in Nature and Science to his name.

Cream of scientists
The Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (AvL) appointments at TU Delft are reserved for the cream of Delft''s young scientists. Promoting them to the position of professor enables them to realise their full potential during their academic career. The AvL professors are not directly burdened with the management and teaching duties associated with a traditional professorship.