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.
Weng HC, Rarity JG, Balram KC & Smith JA (2025) Multi-NV quantum sensing with photonic integrated circuits. European Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics Proceedings Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics Europe CLEO Europe 2025 and European Quantum Electronics Conference Eqec 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.

Professional activities and memberships