Sergio Carbajo

Sergio Carbajo (born October 4, 1985) is a Basque-Spanish-American scientist and educator, musician and composer (alias Julian Telleria), and creative writer. He is an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences with appointments in the Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and Physics & Astronomy departments. He is also a scientist at Stanford University’s Photon Science Division at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Carbajo is known for his contributions to quantum and nonlinear photonics, free electron lasers, ultrafast phenomena, and physical biochemistry. In 2023, Carbajo received the Young Investigator Research Program Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in recognition of his work at the intersection between ultrafast laser and optical physics, quantum electrodynamics, and novel radiation sources.

Education

Carbajo obtained a M.Eng. from Tecnun, University of Navarra in Telecom Engineering in 2009. He holds an M.Sc. from Colorado State University (2012) and Ph.D. in physics from University of Hamburg, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (2015).

Career

Carbajo is an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and a visiting professor at Stanford University. He is the founder and director of the Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative, a scientific consortium whose mission is to understand, design, and ultimately control light-driven physical processes to help solve interconnected socio-technological challenges. Carbajo is also the Director of Diversity at the UCLA ECE department and the founder and director of the Queered Science and Technology Center (QSTC) at UCLA. He is a topical editor of High Power Laser Science and Engineering.

The Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative's (QLMC) focus is on the quantum coherent interplay between light and matter as a fundamental building block of a wide range of quantum phenomena of relevance to quantum information sciences and to determine and control functional properties of physical and biological systems. The QLMC areas of study include life sciences, quantum, ultrafast, nonlinear optics, accelerator and X-ray sources, and chemical engineering. The cooperative seeks to help solve major life and energy challenges by examining the cooperative interaction between photons and matter, and its methodologies are informed by a critically interdisciplinary approach to the science and applications of light by design. Carbajo has established a framework for filming the quantum world by developing novel instruments that orchestrate and capture images of electronic, atomic, and molecular motion in action with unprecedented precision. He is an active faculty member of the California NanoSystems Institute and the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering.

Carbajo is the director of the Queered Science & Technology Center (QSTC) at UCLA. The QSTC exists to underscore the pedagogical and epistemological centrality of critical interdisciplinarity in STEM. It employs queer, radical feminist, and black and indigenous epistemologies to upend pervasive sexual, gendered, racialized, anthropocentric, and able-bodies logics in the physical sciences and science & technology policy. The QSTC employs critical frameworks to challenge and rethink knowledge production and introduces new methodological resources for critical interdisciplinarity in traditional STEM studies.

Honors and awards