Alireza Marandi Named a Moore Experimental Physics Investigator

Alireza Marandi, professor of electrical engineering and applied physics, has been named a 2026 Moore Experimental Physics Investigator. He is one of 21 new investigators named this year by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The honor provides the investigators, the fifth cohort since the program's inception, with $1.35 million in funding over five years to advance the frontiers of fundamental research in experimental physics. Marandi's project will explore how quantum states can be created, manipulated, and measured on extremely fast timescales in chip-scale photonic circuits (circuits using photons instead of electrons).

"The main theme in this project is: How can we access quantum information at the fastest timescales possible, and how can we actually utilize that for quantum information processing," Marandi says. In general, his group explores quantum optics, using circuits built with nanometer-scale features that control light down to the level of individual photons. This ability allows the researchers to study the quantum-mechanical states those photons can occupy. The team is most interested in pushing these nanophotonic systems into an ultrafast regime that permits the measurement of events that play out in just a few femtoseconds, or trillionths of a second.

Marandi says being able to conduct quantum experiments at such timescales is a unique feature of light and could open a new dimension in quantum information processing.

This research area exemplifies the type of work the Moore Foundation seeks to fund with its Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative. "From the start, our aim has been to accelerate progress at the frontier of experimental physics by giving brilliant mid-career scientists the kind of flexible, sustained support that federal grants rarely can," said Theodore Hodapp, the Initiative's program director, in a written statement. "That freedom lets them take on risky, high-reward experiments and follow ideas when research results lead them down new pathways."

Marandi adds: "I appreciate that the Moore Foundation is pushing into areas that are beyond typical mainstream research in the community, and I am happy that they recognized this project as such."

Previous Caltech faculty members to be named Moore Experimental Physics Investigators include Stevan Nadj-Perge; Manuel Endres, David Hsieh, and Andrei Faraon (BS '04).