Dr. Roy Zektzer

Roy Zektzer completed his MSc and PhD in Applied Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As a student, he enjoyed courses where he could build something tangible and useful—computer code, an electrical amplifier, or a simple latch. When he learned about on-chip photonic devices, he was immediately attracted to this new and evolving field of light manipulation, where a single microchip integrates all the elctro-optic components and circuits required to operate an entire system.

During his Ph.D., Dr. Zektzer developed integrated chip-scale frequency references that harnessed the intrinsically narrow optical transitions of atoms and molecules—the very transitions that define fundamental standards of frequency and time, such as those used in atomic clocks.

His postdoctoral research at the Joint Quantum Institute, a program shared by the University of Maryland and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), was supported by the Fulbright Postdoctoral, Yad Hanadiv Rothschild, and JQI Experimental Postdoctoral Fellowships. Dr. Zektzer was the first to demonstrate single-atom, single-photon interactions in hot vapors on a chip scale, work that was highlighted in the journal Science.

At Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Engineering, Dr. Zektzer leads a research group pioneering hybrid atomic–photonic chips for quantum communication, computation, and precision measurement using hot vapor technology. Many existing quantum devices rely on ultra-low temperatures and bulky laboratory-scale infrastructure. His research aims to overcome these limitations by enabling room-temperature, chip-scale quantum systems, contributing to global efforts to translate quantum science into practical technologies.

The hybrid atomic–photonic platforms developed in his lab have the potential to realize compact quantum systems supporting stable light sources, precision sensing, timekeeping, transduction, quantum memory, and computation.