By Jorge Mercado Wednesday, October 8th, 2025

Nobel prizes are returning to the Central Coast, thanks to breakthroughs in quantum mechanics that paved the way for today’s breakthrough computing labs.

Michel H. Devoret of Yale and UC Santa Barbara and John M. Martinis of UCSB joined John Clarke of UC Berkeley as the 2025 laureates in physics. The award was given for discoveries on “quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantisation” during experiments in the 1980s.

“We were recognized in the beginning, people knew it was a good experiment, and all that was nice,” Martinis told the Business Times. “But this kind of recognition is amazing to see. I have had some rough patches in my career where things didn’t go well, but in the end, this makes it very nice.”

The three UC professors were cited specifically “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit,” after they developed a series of experiments in 1984 and 1985 in which they built an electronic circuit out of superconducting components, each component separated by a thin layer of nonconductive material — a setup known as a Josephson junction. 

By controlling and measuring the phenomena that arose when they passed a current through it, they were able to demonstrate behaviors such as quantum tunnelling, and that, true to prediction, energy in a quantum mechanical system is quantised — that is, the system absorbs or emits only certain specific amounts of energy, according to a UCSB press release.

These findings have opened the door to major advancements in technology — technology as ubiquitous as our cellphones, data storage devices and LED lighting. 

At the time the experiments were being carried out, Martinis was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. He said it was “a fantastic experience” to be mentored by both Devoret and Clarke at a press conference held by UCSB on Oct. 7.

“They were both wonderful people and great physicists and we all had our own unique style and way we do things. But I learned so much from them that throughout my whole career, I was kind of trying to recreate that spirit that we had in there,” Martinis said. “In terms of my career, working with them was probably the most important thing to happen to me.”

Devoret, who could not attend the press conference, received his doctorate in condensed matter physics from the University of Paris, Orsay, in 1982, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Clarke’s lab at UC Berkeley from 1982-1984. 

He went on to serve as the director of research, head of the Quantronics Group at CEA-Saclay in France from 1995-2002, then became a professor of applied physics at Yale University from 2002-2024. He joined UCSB in late 2024 and is currently the chief scientist at Google’s Quantum AI lab in Goleta.

The trio’s experiment is also the foundation for superconducting quantum computing, something Martinis is trying to accomplish before the end of his career.

Martinis has been at the forefront of quantum computing advancements for decades now. He joined UCSB in 2004 and by 2014, he was hired by Google’s Quantum AI lab to  build a quantum computer. Google was able to build a 53 entangled qubit system that took on — and solved — a problem considered intractable for classical computers. 

While he was proud of the work done at Google, Martinis said it is too slow.  

“Five years ago, we were at 53 qubits, and now Google is at about 100 qubits, so they’re doubling every five years. That’s too slow. And they made the qubits better; they’ve worked really hard. I know it’s hard, but our view is that you really want to rethink the whole thing, not just incremental improvements, but rethink how to do this,” Martinis said.

In 2022, Martinis founded Qolab, with the goal of creating the first quantum computer for chemistry calculations. Martinis is currently the CTO at Qolab and said this recognition will also do a lot in terms of helping gain more publicity — and hopefully funding — for his company.

“The recognition from this really is going to help our company and I appreciate that,” he said.

During the press conference, UCSB’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost David Marshall said, on behalf of new Chancellor Dennis Assanis, said, “This is a proud day for UC Santa Barbara and the entire UC community.”

“Your impact is limitless. As our campus’s seventh and eighth Nobel laureates, you are part of a tremendous legacy here at UC Santa Barbara and a proud culture of interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation and excellence that has been built over decades,” he said.

Umesh Mishra, UCSB’s dean of engineering, told the Business Times that Martinis and Devoret’s recognition is “a celebration of everything great about UCSB.”

“John and Michel represent why UCSB succeeds because even though we are a small university, close collaboration between sciences and engineering is what makes us unique. You can have the physics but to also have the engineering and lab spaces to make these experiments a reality is fantastic,” he said.

Asked about how he found out about the Nobel prize, Martinis said that his wife, Jean, actually found out first. She happened to be awake at 3 a.m. and received the phone call. Instead of waking him up, she let him sleep in.

“She knows I need my sleep,” he said with a laugh. “Today was just filled with constant phone calls and emails, but the most special thing was connecting with old students who took maybe one class and just wanted to reach out to congratulate.”

“It’s just been a special day,” Martinis said.

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