Dr. Erika Janitz
Affiliations
Assistant Professor
Schulich School of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Software Engineering
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Contact information
Background
Educational Background
PhD Physics, McGill University, 2019
MASc Electrical Engineering with Quantum Information, Institute for Quantum Computing, 2013
BASc Electrical Engineering, University of Waterloo, 2012
Biography
Dr. Erika Janitz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering at the Schulich School of Engineering, where she holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Quantum Hardware Engineering and leads the Quantum Technology and Engineering (QuTE) Lab. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a Quantum City Fellow. Her background spans electrical engineering and physics. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and its Institute for Quantum Computing, and a PhD in Physics from McGill University. She has also held research positions at Harvard University, the Technical University of Denmark, and ETH Zürich.
The QuTE Lab builds quantum sensors and qubits from defects in solids. These are atomic-scale imperfections in crystals such as diamond and silicon, whose electron and nuclear spins can store quantum information or act as extremely sensitive probes of magnetic fields, electric fields, strain, and temperature. The group's work spans three connected areas. In quantum sensing, the lab develops nanoscale magnetic resonance and thermometry techniques, including portable, field-deployable NMR sensors, with applications in chemistry, biology and clean energy. In recent work, Janitz used single near-surface nitrogen-vacancy centers to detect fluorine-labeled DNA tethered to diamond nanopillars, a step toward NMR of individual biomolecules. In solid-state qubits, the team engineers near-surface defects in diamond, including group-IV color centers, and in silicon. The goal is spin–photon interfaces that combine bright, spectrally stable optical transitions with long-lived spins. In quantum devices, the lab designs and fabricates nanophotonic devices that collect and enhance defect-emitted light. Together, these efforts aim to turn quantum discoveries into practical technologies for sensing and quantum communication.
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