David Awschalom is a Professor of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and serves as the Peter J. Clarke Director of the California NanoSystems Institute. He is a pioneer in the field of semiconductor spintronics, exploring the quantum mechanical behavior of charges and spins in nanostructures and the foundations of solid-state quantum information processing. Professor Awschalom received an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award, the David Turnbull Award and the Outstanding Investigator Prize from the Materials Research Society, the International Magnetism Prize and Néel Medal from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the Oliver Buckley Prize from the American Physical Society, the Europhysics Prize from the European Physical Society, and the Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Awschalom is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.