Prof. Andrew Cleland of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) has been named the winner of one of the most prestigious prizes in low-temperature physics.
Finland’s Aalto University last week named Cleland—the John A. MacLean Sr. Professor of Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise at UChicago PME and director of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility—winner of the 2025 Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize.
The award, which is presented every three years, recognized Cleland “for his pioneering research into micromechanical devices and superconducting qubits with applications for quantum information and quantum sensing.”
“A big thanks to my students and postdoctoral researchers who completed all the fantastic experiments that gave the beautiful results that this award recognizes—it represents many years’ and many students’ efforts. They are really the ones who should be recognized here,” Cleland said. “I also want to acknowledge the past and continued support from my funding agencies and program managers, without whom of course this work would not have been possible, as well as all my wonderful colleagues.”
In 2010, Cleland was the first to observe and prepare the mechanical quantum ground state and nonclassical mechanical states in a moving object, which Science magazine named that year’s “Breakthrough of the Year.”
Other accomplishments the award highlighted included demonstrating the preparation of Fock states and arbitrary photon superposition states in superconducting resonators, early work in modern nanomechanical devices, and being one of the first to integrate nano- and micromechanical devices with qubits.
Aalto University Physics Prof. Mika Sillanpää said Cleland’s many accomplishments helped define the field of low-temperature physics.
“When I began my own research in the field, Cleland's excellent textbook on nanomechanics, along with his early papers, were our primary study material. As someone relatively new to the field at the time, I was astonished by Cleland's 2010 breakthrough paper. This work largely defined the domain for years to come,” Sillanpää said. “I was also relieved that Cleland left some discoveries to the followers.”
UChicago PME Dean Nadya Mason said Cleland’s work—both in and out of the lab—continues to advance the field.
“Beyond his personal contributions to the fields of physics and engineering, Andrew Cleland is a fantastic enabler of low-temperature and quantum physics” she said. “From his leadership of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility to his national and international service to his mentorship of students, he has elevated the scientific community.”
In addition to highlighting Cleland’s scientific accomplishments, the award also recognized his work helping support the low-temperature community. Cleland has served on scientific advisory boards for the European Microkelvin Platform and the Finnish Center of Excellence in Low Temperature Quantum Phenomena and Devices, in addition to his work as former chair of the Division of Quantum Information of the American Physical Society.
“Science does not happen in a vacuum, or just through the efforts of the principal investigators and the students,” Cleland said. “There is also the large and complex science infrastructure that mostly relies on the voluntary efforts of scientists to keep it running.”
Cleland will receive the award at the 30th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics (LT30) in Bilbao, Spain, in August.