John M. Doyle

Biosketch

John M. Doyle is Henry B. Silsbee Professor of Physics at Harvard University (since 2015), founding co-Director of the Harvard/MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms (2000-2020), and founding co-Director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative (2018-2025). He earned his BS in Electrical Engineering (1986) and PhD in Condensed Matter and Atomic Physics (1991) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and joined the faculty of the Harvard Department of Physics in 1993. He is a Humboldt, Fulbright, Japan Physical Society, and American Physical Society (APS) Fellow, and winner of the Optica Meggers prize and APS Ramsey and Broida Prizes. He was elected to the presidential line of the APS in 2022 and serves as APS President throughout 2025 – UNESCO’s International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

Research Interests

Dr. Doyle's research has been focused on producing and studying cold and ultracold molecules for the benefit of spectroscopy, particle physics, ultracold chemistry, quantum control, and quantum information. His research group developed the versatile buffer gas beam technique that enables achieving high densities of molecules - including heavy polar diatomics and polyatomics - in the cold regime and has been adopted by numerous laboratories worldwide as the research field’s workhorse. Combined with laser cooling, the Doyle group reached the ultracold regime (below 1 mK) with molecules and achieved their optical trapping. These methods enabled high-precision studies of interactions within molecules with implications for searches for new types of time-reversal violation and beyond the Standard Model particles in the TeV-PeV range.