Ta-You Wu Lecture

John M. Martinis, a 2025 Nobel Laureate in physics, is a distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the chief technology officer of Qolab. He received the Nobel Prize alongside John Clarke and Michel Devoret for their foundational 1980s experiments demonstrating that quantum-mechanical behaviors—specifically, macroscopic quantum tunneling—can occur in man-made electrical circuits. This breakthrough laid the structural groundwork for modern superconducting qubits that power today's quantum computing processors. Previously, he led the quantum hardware effort at Google, where his team achieved the historic milestone of "quantum supremacy" in 2019.

Ta-You Wu Lecture in Physics
The University of Michigan's Department of Physics hosts the annual Ta-You Wu Lecture, which is one of the most prestigious lecture events in our Department. The Lectureship was endowed in 1991 through generous gifts from the University of Michigan Alumni Association in Taiwan. It is named in honor of Michigan Physics alumnus and honorary Doctor of Science, Ta-You Wu, one of the central figures of the 20th century in the Chinese and Taiwanese physics communities.