Ruben Verresen

After obtaining BSc degrees in physics and mathematics in his home country Belgium, in 2012 Ruben moved to Canada to take part in the Perimeter Scholars International master’s program. There he sampled from his many interests in physics, and discovered that many-body quantum physics is a treasure trove of conceptual puzzles. Ruben then planned two stops before fully delving into physics academia. First, he had a last tango with his other academic love—pure mathematics—obtaining a master’s degree through Part III in Cambridge, UK. Second, he then took a year off to travel through Asia to explore his interest in meditation. In 2015, Ruben started his PhD under supervision of Frank Pollmann (Munich) and Roderich Moessner (Dresden), studying topological matter and tensor networks, and spending six months as a graduate fellow at KITP in Santa Barbara. He moved to the USA in 2019 as an HQI postdoctoral fellow in the group of Ashvin Vishwanath at Harvard, where he started working on the opportunities arising from innovations in quantum technology. After spending 2023-2024 as a postdoc at MIT and Harvard, he is excited to be building a theory group in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at UChicago.

Education

• 2015 – 2019: Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Theory at MPIPKS (accredited TU Dresden) and the Technical University of Munich
• 2013 – 2014: Master of Advanced Study in Pure Mathematics (‘Part III’), University of Cambridge, UK
• 2012 – 2013: M.Sc. Physics, Perimeter Institute, Canada
• 2009 – 2012: B.Sc. Physics, KU Leuven, Belgium
• 2009 – 2012: B.Sc. Mathematics, KU Leuven, Belgium