K. Birgitta Whaley

K. Birgitta Whaley is the Director of the Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center and a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkley. Whaley has contributed to quantum dynamics in condensed phases, quantum information and computation, and is a leader in quantum biology. She clarified the spectroscopy of molecules in superfluid helium providing a microscopic understanding of nanoscale superfluidity. In quantum computation/information she discovered decoherence free subspaces, critical for practical quantum computation/simulation, described universal quantum computing based on exchange, and showed that quantum random walks can generate general quantum algorithms. Her contributions to quantum biology include the presence of entanglement in photosynthetic light harvesting, and determining the conditions under which coherent quantum dynamics are essential for biological function. She is the recipient of the Bergmann Award.