Leadership
Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano
Associate Vice President for Research, National Laboratories
Dr. Figueroa-Feliciano, a professor of physics and astronomy who joined Northwestern from MIT in 2015, serves as associate vice president of research focusing on national laboratories.
With a distinguished career spanning over two decades, Dr. Figueroa-Feliciano brings a wealth of experience in experimental physics and collaboration with national research facilities, including NASA, Fermilab, and Argonne National Laboratory. At Northwestern, he oversees partnerships with national laboratories, such as the Northwestern-Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering (NAISE) and the Northwestern-Fermilab Center for Applied Physics and Superconducting Technology (CAPST).
Dr. Figueroa-Feliciano’s research is centered on the search for physics beyond the Standard Model and the development of advanced experimental techniques with applications in quantum computing. Although the Standard Model has provided a robust framework for understanding particle physics, it falls short in explaining several fundamental phenomena—including neutrino masses, dark matter, cosmic acceleration, and gravity. Dr. Figueroa-Feliciano’s investigations focus on dark matter and neutrinos, two of the most promising avenues for uncovering new physics in the coming decade. His laboratory is pioneering novel sensing technologies based on superconducting qubits, which not only advance particle detection capabilities but also contribute to the development of high-fidelity qubits for next-generation quantum computers.