As a new graduate of Washington University in St. Louis with degrees in engineering and physics, Yves Idzerda considered himself an electrical engineer first. While interviewing for his first post-baccalaureate engineering job, however, he met the author of a classic book about an element of electronics that relies on quantum mechanics to work. Their discussion changed Idzerda’s self-perception – and the course of his career – forever.
“I kept asking him questions about his book,” he recalled of his conversation with Ian E. Getreu, who wrote “Modeling the Bipolar Transistor” in 1976. “He stopped me and said, ‘You ask a lot of questions for someone who’s going to be an engineer. If you want to understand this stuff, you should go to graduate school in physics.’”
Idzerda took Getreu’s advice and went on to earn a master’s degree in physics from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then moved east to pursue a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland while his wife attended medical school.
Raised in Beaverton, Oregon, Idzerda acknowledges that he crisscrossed the country more than once in pursuit of educational and other opportunities in his field.
“Now I’m working my way back west and I stopped in Montana,” said Idzerda, a professor in Montana State University’s Department of Physics in the College of Letters and Science since 2000. “That’s far enough.”
He will share much more about his geographic and scientific journeys and how they continue to influence his work in the second installment of MSU’s 2025-26 Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer Series on Feb. 17. His talk, “Quantum Materials and What Comes Next,” will begin at 7 p.m. in Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies. The free event will be followed by a reception at 8 p.m.
Idzerda is now director of the MonArk Quantum Foundry, a partnership between MSU and the University of Arkansas whose mission is to accelerate research for quantum technologies in the U.S. Part of his lecture will focus on some of the exciting quantum breakthroughs and applications poised to emerge in the second quantum revolution, which began in the 1960s and is still underway.
“The audience, hopefully, will get a better understanding of quantum materials and see that they are now at that edge of development,” he said. “They’re ready to be turned into useful products.”
Idzerda is among the researchers whose fundamental work has contributed to quantum advancement. After earning his Ph.D., he worked for 13 years at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., researching magnetic materials and then spintronics, which leverages the fundamental quantum property of an electron’s spin, rather than its charge.
“Before, in electronics, we would move the charge around. Now we move the spin around, and that gives me two ways to control it and makes it much more sensitive,” he said. “Because spin is a conserved quantity, just as charge is, I get lots of ways I can use it. Spintronics now shows up in your cell phone.”
He posits that the world’s first quantum revolution gave us electronics, radar and other technologies that we now take for granted; the second, he predicts, will be just as transformative, defined by developments in quantum sensors and computing.
One such sensor is now in use at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, whose two main detector sites are in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. LIGO is the first instrument to directly detect the signal of a gravitational wave, which is a ripple in space-time created by an astronomical event, such as the collision of two black holes. In 2023, LIGO’s original sensor was replaced by a quantum sensor that has increased the observatory’s sensitivity by orders of magnitude.
“They did a thing called frequency squeezing, or light squeezing, that allowed them to reduce the noise level,” Idzerda said. “It allows them to see many more interactions, other than just the largest mergers. It was really remarkable.”
He believes other coming technologies will be no less remarkable for society, and that’s what he plans to share with his audience.
“The development of electronics was really beneficial to our daily lives and really improved standards of living,” he said. “Quantum materials may have that same effect, and we’re starting to see some of that as it continues to expand.”
The Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer Series recognizes outstanding MSU faculty for their creative scholarship and leadership. More information and the full lineup for the 2025-26 series can be found at https://www.montana.edu/news/24752/montana-state-announces-13th-annual-provost-s-distinguished-lecturer-series.