David Awschalom is a professor of physics, electrical, and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara and 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.

David is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received numerous awards, including the Outstanding Investigator Prize and David Turnbull Award (Materials Research Society), the International Magnetism Prize and Néel Medal (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics), the Oliver E. Buckley Prize (APS), the Europhysics Prize from the European Physical Society, and the Newcomb Cleveland Prize (AAAS).