Congrats to Sahil and Josh for Defending their Theses!

After successful defenses, they'll be heading off to Qudara (Sahil) and IonQ (Josh) for their next adventures in quantum photonics!

June 11, 2026

Congratulations to Sahil Patel and Josh Castro on successfully defending their PhD dissertations! It's been a privilege to see their growth and accomplishments throughout their time in our group, and we're excited to see them take the next steps in their careers. Sahil will be joining Qudara, where he'll work on developing deterministic optical qubit engines for scalable quantum technologies, while Josh will be joining IonQ, where he'll work on heterogeneous photonics for next-generation quantum systems. Congratulations to both on this major milestone. We look forward to seeing the impact they make in the years ahead!