Dr. Sonia Buckley, NIST

Abstract: Emerging technologies in both quantum and analog computing for AI are pushing the limits of measurement science. Quantum photonic computing, for instance, relies on single-photon detectors with efficiencies exceeding 99%—a threshold that demands new metrological approaches capable of characterizing not only detection efficiency but also loss, timing jitter, and photon-number resolution with sub-percent uncertainty. Similarly, next-generation analog computing systems, such as resistive or photonic matrix-vector multipliers, require new frameworks for benchmarking precision, noise tolerance, and energy efficiency across devices and architectures. This talk will highlight the parallels between these domains—where performance depends on analog physical processes rather than digital abstractions—and outline how metrology can evolve to support them. Dr. Buckley will discuss current state-of-the-art measurement techniques for both single-photon detection and analog compute hardware, discuss the unique challenges they present, and discuss their work on accelerating progress across emerging computing paradigms through advancing metrology techniques.

Biography: Dr. Sonia Buckley is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. Sonia received a PhD in Applied Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2014, and her undergraduate degree in Physics from Trinity College Dublin in 2009. Her doctoral work was done under the supervision of Prof. Jelena Vuckovic on nonlinear frequency conversion in III-V photonic crystal cavities. Her current research interests are in photonic/opto-electronic devices and superconducting electronics for applications in integrated quantum optics and artificial intelligence.