Bio

Assistant Professor of Physics

Office: ESB 3113

jongyeon [at] illinois.edu

I am an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I am a member of the Anthony Leggett Institute of Condensed Matter Theory and IQUIST. My research sits at the intersection of quantum many-body physics and quantum information science: mixed-state phases of matter and decoherence, quantum error-correcting codes, non-equilibrium dynamics, and exotic quantum phases and criticality. See the research page for an overview and the CV & talks page for the full record.

I received a B.S./M.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Caltech (2011–2015, advisor: John Preskill) and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University (2015–2020, advisor: Ashvin Vishwanath). I was a Gordon and Betty Moore Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (2020–2023) and a Research Scholar at UC Berkeley (2023–2024) before joining the faculty at Illinois in 2024. Since 2025, I have also been a Quantum Universe Scholar at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul, Korea.

timeline

• 2024 – present: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Assistant Professor of Physics
• 2025 – present: Korea Institute for Advanced Study (Seoul, Korea), Quantum Universe Scholar
• 2023 – 2024: University of California, Berkeley, Research Scholar
• 2020 – 2023: Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Gordon and Betty Moore Postdoctoral Fellow
• 2015 – 2020: Harvard University, Ph.D. in Physics (advisor: Ashvin Vishwanath)
• 2011 – 2015: California Institute of Technology, B.S./M.S. in Physics and Mathematics (advisor: John Preskill)