Dr Matthew Berrington (Australian National University) has been awarded the Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics, recognising the most outstanding PhD thesis in physics or its applications by a student from an Australian University, for the thesis titled: “Optical studies of magnetically ordered erbium crystals.”

His work has focused on optically studying various rare earth crystals, to identify a system suitable for microwave-optical conversion, and to study the optical effects typical of these systems. This work could help enable the integration of disparate quantum information technologies, paving the way for distributed quantum computing and a worldwide quantum internet.