Linderman Library Rotunda stained glass dome

Coraline Fujiwara

Assistant Professor

cof225@lehigh.edu

Lewis Lab 413

Education:

BA in Physics, University of California, Berkeley, 2012

MA in Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015

Ph.D. in Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2019

Explore this Profile
×

Research Areas

Additional Interests

Experimental atomic physics, quantum thermalization, non-equilibrium physics, Floquet engineering, Bose condensates, degenerate Fermi gases

Research Statement

In addition to my scientific research interests, I have a great passion for working in the laboratory and am enamored with the exquisite precision and control found in atomic physics experiments. More broadly, I love all aspects of the scientific and experimental process and find the lab to be an incredibly exciting playground for the curious-minded. Moreover, I am excited about the maturation of modern technologies that make quantum physics accessible to the broader public. Who knows what future technologies lie ahead of us? And how can experimental labs better train future generations of engineers, scientists, and informed citizens?

Outside of the laboratory, I enjoy backpacking in the summer and skiing in the winter. I am also slowly exploring the many bike trails in the Lehigh Valley. Indoors, I enjoy playing board games and tabletop role-playing games. I also have a cat, Momo, who I am attempting (successfully?) to train to be an adventure cat.

Biography

Cora Fujiwara received her Bachelor of Arts in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2012, where she worked on microchannel plate characterization for UV detection at the Space Sciences Laboratory. After debating whether to switch fields to experimental condensed matter physics or atomic physics for graduate school, she joined the laboratory led by David Weld at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There, she helped build the lab to investigate the properties of Bose condensates of lithium-7 in strongly driven optical lattices and received her Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Physics in 2015 and 2019, respectively.

She then left sunny California for the University of Toronto to work in the group of Joseph Thywissen as a postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Department and the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC). During her time in Toronto, Cora led a team investigating phenomena in p-wave Feshbach resonances and quantum simulation with fermionic potassium. In 2025, Cora joined the physics faculty at Lehigh University, where she is starting a research group to study ultracold Fermi gases in highly excited and non-equilibrium states of optical lattices.