Dr Joe A Smith

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Lecturer in Quantum Technologies

joe.a.smith@sheffield.ac.uk

Sir Frederick Mappin Building

Full contact details

Dr Joe A Smith
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Sir Frederick Mappin Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD

Profile: I graduated with an MEng in Electronic Engineering with Nanotechnology from UCL in 2014. Following a Kennedy scholarship year at MIT, I received my PhD in 2020 from the University of Bristol on spin-photon interfaces for quantum computing applications. Follow several years of postdoctoral research at Bristol, I joined the University of Sheffield as a Lecturer in 2025.

My lab looks to create useful applications from physics experiments with the injection of technologies. One target is answering whether single atom-like defects in solids can be controlled at scale, by borrowing existing semiconductor processing tools. We use silicon photonics, microwave electronics and robotics as well as building custom large-scale confocal microscopes.

Recent work has looked at embedding atom-like systems in photonics, designing new photonic nanocavities and demonstrating compatibility with silicon photonics. I am also interested in engineering applied to spins, through scalable microwave control using multi-layer silicon electronics, and advancing quantum sensing by aligning large vector fields with robotics.

The research goal here is to put photonics and electronics front and centre: with useful applications in adding spins to photonic quantum computing and networks, but also for more near-term implications for high resolution quantum sensing.

Research interests

Publications

Smith JA, Zhang D & Balram KC (2024) Robotic Vectorial Field Alignment for Spin‐Based Quantum Sensors. Advanced Science, 11(2).
Weng H-C, Monroy-Ruz J, Matthews JCF, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2023) Heterogeneous Integration of Solid-State Quantum Systems with a Foundry Photonics Platform. ACS Photonics, 10(9), 3302-3309.
Weng H-C, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA () Crosstalk-mitigated microelectronic control for optically active spins. Physical Review Applied, 25(2).

Jaimes KS, Smith JA & Khatami Z (2025) Towards Sub-Diffraction Mapping of NV Center Positions via Electrostatic Raster Scanning. 2025 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE) (pp 412-413), 30 August 2025 - 5 September 2025.
Weng H-C, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2025) Multi-NV Quantum Sensing with Photonic Integrated Circuits. 2025 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC) (pp 1-1), 23 June 2025 - 27 June 2025.
Weng H-C, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2025) Magnetic position finding with an NV integrated photonic integrated circuit. Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science 2025 (FiO, LS) (pp FW7B.5-FW7B.5), 2025.

Tiwari V, Liu Z, Weng H-C, Balram KC, Rarity JG, Mandal S, Williams OA, Morley GW & Smith JA (2025) Single photon emission from lithographically-positioned engineered nanodiamonds for cryogenic applications.
Weng H-C, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2024) Crosstalk-mitigated microelectronic control for optically-active spins.
Smith JA, Zhang D & Balram KC (2023) Robotic vectorial field alignment for spin-based quantum sensors.
Weng H-C, Monroy-Ruz J, Matthews JCF, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2023) Heterogeneous integration of solid state quantum systems with a foundry photonics platform.

Professional activities and memberships