Draft:Chetan Nayak

Chetan Nayak is an American physicist and distinguished professor known for his contributions to the field of condensed matter physics and quantum computing. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is currently a Technical Fellow at Microsoft and holds a professorship in physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Nayak's research topics include topological phases of matter, high-temperature superconductivity, quantum Hall effect, and periodically driven quantum systems.

Early life and education
Nayak was born and raised in New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School, graduating in 1988. He pursued his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1992.

He obtained his Ph.D. in 1996 from Princeton University. Following his doctoral studies, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB.

Career
Nayak served as a professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1997 to 2006 before joining UCSB as a professor of physics in 2007, where he continues to hold a position. Additionally, he was a visiting professor at Nihon University in Japan in 2002.

In 2005, Nayak transitioned to a role at Microsoft.

In 2014, he became the Principal Research Manager of Microsoft Station Q, a research lab focused on quantum computing and condensed matter physics.

In 2018, he assumed leadership of the quantum hardware division of Microsoft's quantum program. He was named a Technical Fellow in 2023.

Research
Nayak has conducted pioneering research on topological phases of matter, which has laid the groundwork for the development of fault-tolerant quantum computation. In collaboration with renowned physicist Frank Wilczek in 1996, Nayak discovered the non-Abelian statistics associated with Majorana zero modes, a fundamental concept crucial for Microsoft's quantum computer architecture.

In 2000, along with Sudip Chakravarty, Bob Laughlin, and Dirk Morr, he proposed the concept of hidden order in high-temperature superconductors.

In 2005, Nayak, along with Michael Freedman and Sankar Das Sarma, initiated efforts to build a topological quantum computer utilizing the 5/2 fractional quantum Hall state.

In 2008, he authored a seminal article surveying the field of topological quantum computing.

In 2016, Nayak, along with Dominic Else and Bela Bauer, revived the concept of "time crystals" and predicted their occurrence in periodically driven systems.

Recognition and awards
Nayak is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has received the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Early Career Award, and the Outstanding Young Physicist Award from the American Chapter of the Indian Physics Association.