Sergio Carbajo

Sergio Carbajo

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR / INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE OFFICER
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

58-111 Engr. IV

Email: scarbajo@g.ucla.edu

Websites

RESEARCH AND INTERESTS
Carbajo directs the Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative (QLMC), whose mission is to understand, design, and ultimately control light-driven physical processes to help solve interconnected socio-technological challenges. We work on groundbreaking frameworks for filming the quantum world -– in essence, we are quantum documentary filmmakers. This work is enabled by developing novel instruments that orchestrate and capture images of electronic, atomic, and molecular motion in action with unprecedented precision. Our research is founded on the following four intersecting areas that seed new concepts, theory, and experiments in the advancement of ultrafast photon sciences and light-matter interactions:
1. Ultrafast & Nonlinear Optics, Quantum Photonics
2. Ultrafast Sciences & Molecular Dynamics
3. Accelerators & X-ray Free Electron Lasers
4. Scientific Epistemology in Critically Representative Science & Technology
The QLMC is a research consortium located across various areas in California: the UCLA School of Engineering (headquarters), the UCLA Physics Science Division, Stanford University’s Photon Science Directorate, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) Directorate, the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering (CQSE), and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI).
IN THE NEWS
EDUCATION
Carbajo is an associate professor at the UCLA Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and the UCLA Physics & Astronomy departments and a visiting professor at Stanford University’s Photon Science Division at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He is the founder and director of the Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative, a scientific consortium whose mission is to understand, design, and ultimately control light-driven physical processes to help solve interconnected socio-technological challenges. Carbajo is also the director of the Queered Science and Technology Center (QSTC) at UCLA. He is laying a ground-breaking framework to address overarching issues of diversity and critical representation in STEM through queer, radical feminist, and black analyses of the impact of science & technology in society.He graduated with a BS in Telecom Engineering from Tecnun, Universidad de Navarra in 2009. In 2012, he received his M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Colorado State University’s National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. Later he continued his joint doctoral program simultaneously at the Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for Free Electron Laser Science, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, and obtained his Ph.D. in Physics in 2015. He has received several awards recognizing his contributions to ultrafast photon sciences and their application in life and energy sciences, including the 2024 Nature LSA Rising Star Award, the 2024 Humboldt Fellow Award, the 2024 ONR Young Investigator Program award, the 2023 AFOSR Young Investigator Program award, the 2021 Horizon Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the 2021 SPIE Early Career Award, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship in 2019, SRI 2018 Young Scientist Award, and the PIER Helmholtz Foundation Dissertation Award in 2015, among others. He teaches photonics, ultrafast and quantum optics, and accelerator physics at UCLA and at the U.S. Particle Accelerator School. He currently holds various patents, is the author of over 200 peer-reviewed publications – including two book chapters – and has presented his work at over 100 international conferences.
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
  • 2025 UCLA Inaugural HSI Fellow
  • 2024 Nature Light Science and Applications Rising Star Award
  • 2024 Humboldt Foundation Fellow (3 year term)
  • 2024 ONR Young Investigator Program Award
  • 2024 Blavatnik Young Investigator (Finalist)
  • 2023 IEEE Senior Member
  • 2023 UCLA Innovation Fellow
  • 2023 AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award
  • Royal Society of Chemistry 2021 Horizon Prize (co-recipient)
  • 2021 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award
  • 2019 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow
  • SRI 2018  Young Scientist Award
  • PIER Helmholtz Foundation Dissertation Award, 2015
  • PIER Helmholtz Mobility Award for Young Investigators, 2014
  • 2014 US Particle Accelerator School Fellow
  • 2011 Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Awardee § XRM2010 Best Student Poster Presentation Award
  • 2010-2014 Basque Research Excellence Fellow
  • 2010 Colorado State University Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence Scholar
  • 2009 AVS Symposium Best Student Presentation
  • 2008-2009 FARO Global Scholar