The Physics Department
Robert Knobel
Associate Professor, Physics Department Head
Physics, Queen's University
Bio
Dr. Robert Knobel is an Associate Professor and the department head of Physics at Queen's University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University under Nitin Samarth working on the MBE growth and low-temperature transport measurements of diluted magnetic semiconductor two-dimensional electron gases and did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Santa Barbara with Andrew Cleland and David Awschalom where he worked on nano-electro- mechanical systems. He is the founding director of the Kingston NanoFabrication Kingston (NFK), which opened in 2015 and is enabling multi-disciplinary research in nanoscale devices and systems at Queen’s and in the Ontario region. His research concentrates on nanomechanical and nanoelectronic systems, and the quantum limits of measurement. He is the recipient of an Ontario Early Researcher Award, sat on the Board of Directors of Nano Ontario and is undergraduate chair of Engineering Physics. He has collaborated with experimental, theoretical and industrial colleagues at institutions worldwide including the University of Colorado, University of California - Santa Barbara, the National High Magnetic Field Lab and Grafoid Inc.
Dr. Knobel brings his experience in these systems to the closely related field of optomechanical systems. His expertise is in crystal growth (from high temperature superconductors to MBE of semiconductors and CVD of graphene) to the growth and fabrication of novel materials and devices for optical studies. He works with Sankey and collaborators at McGill to bring this materials and electronics expertise to work in optomechanical systems. He contributes his expertise in nanofabrication to all research themes.