Scott Cushing pioneers cutting-edge quantum photonics and ultrafast spectroscopy, revolutionizing fundamental light–matter interactions to create groundbreaking sensing, imaging, and energy solutions. 

As Chief Scientific Advisor and Co-Founder of Quantelix, he leads scientific strategy and translates quantum-enabled, time-resolved fluorescence technologies into highly compact, innovative biosensing platforms. He also serves as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, where his laboratory develops chip-scale entangled-photon sources and ultrafast X-ray and electron spectroscopies, providing unprecedented insights into molecular and materials dynamics.

Scott has been recognized as a Sloan Research Fellow, DARPA Young Faculty Award recipient, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, Cottrell Scholar, and Moore Inventor Fellow, among other prestigious honors. Scott’s pioneering research in quantum and chemical physics related to Quantelix earned him the 2025 JCP–DCP Future of Chemical Physics Lectureship and the 2026 DCP Frontiers of Chemical Physics Seminar. He has contributed to National Academies studies at the intersection of chemistry, quantum information science, and sensing. An inventor with three patent families and author of approximately 95 scientific publications cited over 12,000 times, his work has significantly advanced the field of laser spectroscopy.

Before co-founding Quantelix, Scott served as Senior Research Advisor to Pacific Integrated Energy, advancing next-generation solar technologies. He completed a U.S. Department of Energy EERE Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Stephen Leone’s research group.

Scott holds a Ph.D. in Physics and a B.S. in Physics with an emphasis on materials science and chemistry from West Virginia University.