Dr Joe A Smith

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Lecturer in Quantum Technologies

joe.a.smith@sheffield.ac.uk

Sir Frederick Mappin Building

Full contact details

Dr Joe A Smith
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Sir Frederick Mappin Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD

Profile: I graduated with an MEng in Electronic Engineering with Nanotechnology from UCL in 2014. Following a Kennedy scholarship year at MIT, I received my PhD in 2020 from the University of Bristol on spin-photon interfaces for quantum computing applications. Follow several years of postdoctoral research at Bristol, I joined the University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in 2025.

My lab looks to create useful applications from physics experiments with the injection of technologies. One target is answering whether single atom-like defects in solids can be controlled at scale, by borrowing existing semiconductor processing tools. We use silicon photonics, microwave electronics and robotics as well as building custom large-scale confocal microscopes.

Recent work has looked at embedding atom-like systems in photonics, designing new photonic nanocavities and demonstrating compatibility with silicon photonics. I am also interested in engineering applied to spins, through scalable microwave control using multi-layer silicon electronics, and advancing quantum sensing by aligning large vector fields with robotics.

The research goal here is to put photonics and electronics front and centre: with useful applications in adding spins to photonic quantum computing and networks, but also for more near-term implications for high resolution quantum sensing.

Qualifications

Research interests

Publications

Smith JA, Zhang D & Balram KC (2024) Robotic Vectorial Field Alignment for Spin‐Based Quantum Sensors. Advanced Science, 11(2).
Weng H-C, Monroy-Ruz J, Matthews JCF, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2023) Heterogeneous Integration of Solid-State Quantum Systems with a Foundry Photonics Platform. ACS Photonics, 10(9), 3302-3309.
Smith JA, Monroy-Ruz J, Jiang P, Rarity JG & Balram KC (2022) Toward compact high-efficiency grating couplers for visible wavelength photonics. Optics Letters, 47(15), 3868-3868.
Smith J, Monroy-Ruz J, Rarity JG & C. Balram K (2020) Single photon emission and single spin coherence of a nitrogen vacancy center encapsulated in silicon nitride. Applied Physics Letters, 116(13).
Franchino S, Gonzalez-Diaz D, Hall-Wilton R, Jackman RB, Muller H, Nguyen TT, de Oliveira R, Oliveri E, Pfeiffer D, Resnati F , Ropelewski L et al (2016) Charge transfer properties through graphene for applications in gaseous detectors. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 824, 571-574.
Smith JA, Clear C, Balram KC, McCutcheon DPS & Rarity JG () Nitrogen-Vacancy Center Coupled to an Ultrasmall-Mode-Volume Cavity: A High-Efficiency Source of Indistinguishable Photons at 200 K. Physical Review Applied, 15(3).

Smith J, Ruz JM, Rarity JG & Balram KC (2020) Single Photons and Single Spins: NV Centres Encapsulated in Silicon Nitride. Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (pp STu4F.3-STu4F.3), 2020.
Thuiner P, Hall-Wilton R, Jackman RB, Muller H, Nguyen TT, Oliveri E, Pfeiffer D, Resnati F, Ropelewski L, Smith JA , van Stenis M et al (2014) Charge transfer properties through graphene layers in gas detectors. 2014 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS/MIC) (pp 1-4), 8 November 2014 - 15 November 2014.

Weng H-C, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2024) Crosstalk-mitigated microelectronic control for optically-active spins.
Smith JA, Zhang D & Balram KC (2023) Robotic vectorial field alignment for spin-based quantum sensors.
Weng H-C, Monroy-Ruz J, Matthews JCF, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2023) Heterogeneous integration of solid state quantum systems with a foundry photonics platform.
Smith JA, Monroy-Ruz J, Jiang P, Rarity JG & Balram KC (2021) Towards compact high-efficiency grating couplers for visible wavelength photonics.
Smith JA, Clear C, Balram KC, McCutcheon DPS & Rarity JG (2020) The NV centre coupled to an ultra-small mode volume cavity: a high efficiency source of indistinguishable photons at 200 K.
Smith J, Monroy-Ruz J, Rarity JG & Balram KC (2019) Single photon emission and single spin coherence of a nitrogen vacancy centre encapsulated in silicon nitride.

Professional activities and memberships