Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Ralph Jimenez (Fed)
Chief of the Quantum Physics Division
Dr. Ralph Jimenez is the Chief of the NIST Quantum Physics Division, which is based in JILA, the joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Dr. Jimenez received a B.A. in chemistry from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago. He performed postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego and was a Senior Research Associate at the Scripps Research Institute. In 2003, he joined NIST/QPD as a JILA Fellow. He served as Associate Chair of JILA in 2024-2025. As an adjoint faculty member at the University of Colorado, he has been actively involved in mentoring students and postdocs and teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels. His research has encompassed several areas, including ultrafast optical and x-ray spectroscopy of chemical and biological systems, microfluidic flow cytometry, photophysics of fluorescent proteins, and interactions of quantum light with atoms and molecules. This research has applications in cellular bioimaging, quantum sensing, and quantum imaging. He has co-authored more than 90 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has five patents.
Research Interests/Areas of Expertise
- Applications of quantum optics to molecular and biological systems
- Development of fluorescent proteins for bioimaging
- Molecular spectroscopy and photophysics
