Born in 1968 in Palo Alto, California, USA, Prof. Mitchell earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999 with a thesis on the quantum optics of photon-photon interactions. In the group of Serge Haroche at the Ecole Normale Superieure he advanced cavity quantum electrodynamics with cold atoms and microfabricated optical resonators. At Reed College he built the first diode-laser based entangled photon sources, and in the group of Aephraim Steingberg in Toronto he demonstrated the first multi-photon NooN states and quantum process tomography. He joined ICFO in 2004 and ICREA in 2011. His leads the research group Atomic Quantum Optics at ICFO and coordinates the Qauntum Technologies Emergent Community in Catalonia (QuantumCAT).  He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2011, an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant in 2016, and has been recognized with a Vanguardia de la Ciencia award in 2012, Ehrenfest Prize and Kavli Publication Prize in 2016.

Research interests

Prof. Mitchell leads the Atomic Quantum Optics group at ICFO, which uses experimental quantum optics and atomic physics for quantum technology and quantum foundations. The group works with single neutral atoms as single quantum systems, spinor Bose-Einstein condensates and high-density atomic vapors as extreme sensors, and has invented several sources of atom-resonant squeezed and entangled light. Major projects include chip-scale atomic magnetometers for magnetic brain imaging (Quantum Technologies Flagship project macQsimal), quantum enhancement protocols for state of the art optical lattice atomic clocks, quantum random number generators for loophole-free Bell tests and device-independent quantum technologies, and coordination of The BIG Bell Test, a world-wide collaboration in foundations of physics. In 2017 Prof. Mitchell co-founded the Quside Technologies to deliver state of the art quantum random number generation for communications and data security applications.