Kim receives Grainger Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship

Minjeong Kim, a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one of three engineering students selected for a 2026-2027 Grainger Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, which honors outstanding doctoral students.

Kim is a member of Antoine-Bascom and Jack St. Clair Kilby Professor Mikhail Kats‘ lab, where she focuses on silicon-photonic interfaces for quantum systems. Her work has two main thrusts: developing solid-state quantum sensors in diamond by extracting light from color centers, and using light to trap neutral atoms to enable atom-based quantum computing and sensing. Over her four years at UW-Madison, Kim has been deeply involved in design, nanofabrication and optical measurement of these quantum systems.

She has won several highly selective awards, including a Graduate Student Gold Award for her presentation at the 2025 Materials Research Society (MRS) fall meeting and a best poster award at the 2024 MRS fall meeting. She was a WARF Innovation Award finalist in 2025.

She currently has two pending patent applications that have been licensed by WARF to Dirac Labs Inc. for use in a quantum navigation device.

Kim’s research has led to nine conference presentations and six published papers, one of which was highlighted in Optics & Photonics News, a major magazine in the field.

Her work on quantum sensing advances a major research priority for UW-Madison and for the College of Engineering, which recently launched a series of Engineering Moonshots that include an effort to make quantum technologies a practical reality.

“Minjeong Kim is an exceptionally productive and independent PhD dissertator,” wrote ECE Interim Chair and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor Parmesh Ramanathan in his nomination letter. “Her external recognition is unusually broad for someone at her career stage. The ECE department believes that she would be an outstanding recipient of the Grainger Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship.”