Brian Leeds DeMarco is a physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2005 he placed first in the quantum physics portion of the "Amazing Light" competition honoring Charles Townes, winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics. DeMarco is currently conducting experiments in quantum simulation. DeMarco earned a bachelor's degree in physics from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1996. He then earned a PhD in physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2001. As a graduate student, DeMarco worked with Deborah S. Jin to create the first true Fermionic condensate. The journal Science selected this achievement as one of the top ten scientific discoveries of 1999. From 2001–2003, DeMarco was a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Boulder), working on quantum computing experiments with trapped atomic ions. He joined the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois in 2003. Education Vestal Senior High School, Vestal NY Class of 1992 SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, NY Class of 1996 University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado Ph.D. in Physics 2001 Honors and awards Breakthrough of the Year, 1999 - Science magazine - Science 286, 2239-2243 (1999) JILA Scientific Achievement Award, 2000 American Physical Society DAMOP Dissertation Award, 2002 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award, 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2004 1st Place, "Quantum Physics" category, Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery, 2005 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, 2006 Beckman Fellow, 2006-2007 Fellow of the American Physical Society, 2015 Publications References External links DeMarco home page Amazing Light Competition Physics Illinois News 21st-century American physicists Science teachers University of Colorado alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Living people Year of birth missing (living people) State University of New York at Geneseo alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society