Ana Maria Rey Ayala

Biosketch

Prof. Ana Maria Rey obtained her bachelor’s degree in physics in 1999 from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. She pursued her graduate studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a Ph.D. in 2004. She then joined the Institute of Theoretical, Molecular and Optical Physics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a Postdoctoral Fellow from 2005 to 2008. She joined the University of Colorado Boulder Physics Department as an assistant research professor and JILA as an associate fellow in 2008. She was promoted to JILA Fellow in 2012. In 2017 she became a Fellow of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and shifted her position in the department of Physics to Adjoint professor.
Rey is a theoretical quantum physicist who works on ways of developing new techniques for controlling quantum systems and their applications ranging from quantum simulations/information to time and frequency standards. Her research is often directly applicable to state-of-the-art experiments, in particular to quantum sensors such atomic clocks and quantum simulators.
She has been the recipient of various awards, including the DAMOP Thesis Prize (2005), the MacArthur Fellowship (2013), the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2013), the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award (2014), and the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists (2019). Rey is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Research Interests

Rey’s research interests are in the scientific interface between atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics and quantum information science. Specifically, on ways of developing new techniques for controlling quantum systems such as ultra-cold atoms, molecules, trapped ions and optical cavities and then using them in various applications ranging from quantum simulations/information to time and frequency standards. She wants to engineer fully controllable quantum systems capable to mimic desired real materials as well as to develop advanced and novel measurement techniques capable of probing atomic quantum systems at the fundamental level.
Rey's research in theoretical quantum physicist is highly collaborative. Her goal is to guide experiments such as the world’s best atomic clocks, cavity QED interferometers, and quantum simulators to directly improve measurements and quantum technologies in way that may enable tabletop studies of some of the deepest fundamental questions in physics, such as characterizing dark matter and illuminating the nature of quantum gravity.