Jeffrey Shainline

Shainline earned a B.S. in physics from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2005.⁠[1]

He received a PhD in physics from Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry in 2010.⁠[1]

He recounts joining the NIST group of Rich Mirin and Sae Woo Nam in 2013 on an NRC postdoctoral fellowship to work on on-chip photonic quantum computing components, while sketching neuron-like circuits from superconducting single-photon detectors on his own time.⁠[2]

In December 2015 a Nature paper by researchers at UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, MIT and the University of Colorado Boulder, Single-chip microprocessor that communicates directly using light, demonstrated the first processor to use light for ultrafast communication; Shainline was among the authors.⁠[3]

The paper’s author information lists him at the University of Colorado Boulder, with a note giving his present address as NIST in Boulder.⁠[4]

He has presented superconducting optoelectronic networks at venues including the IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing in San Diego in October 2016, the Single Photon Workshop in July 2017, the 33rd International Symposium on Superconductivity hosted virtually by Japan’s AIST in December 2020, and the UCSD Chalk Talk series in December 2025.⁠[5]

In March 2017 he, Sonia Buckley, Richard Mirin and Sae Woo Nam published a Physical Review Applied paper proposing a hybrid semiconductor–superconductor neuromorphic hardware platform in which few-photon light-emitting diodes and superconducting-nanowire single-photon detectors act as spiking neurons linked by a network of optical waveguides.⁠[6]

In October 2017 the team published work on all-silicon light-emitting diodes waveguide-integrated with superconducting single-photon detectors; from April to July 2018 he was first author of the Superconducting optoelectronic networks series covering general principles, receiver circuits, synaptic plasticity, transmitter circuits and networks and scaling, followed in October by circuit designs for loop neurons.⁠[7]

In July 2020 he introduced his paper Does Cosmological Evolution Select for Technology? on his website: extending Lee SmolinLee SmolinLee Smolin is an American-born theoretical physicist and one of the founding faculty members of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics who works mainly on quantum gravity; he is a co-inventor of loop quantum gravity and deformed special relativity and proposed the hypothesis of cosmological natural selection. He has written several books on physics for the public, including The Trouble with Physics and Time Reborn.Open the full entry’s theory of cosmological natural selection, it holds that the universe’s physical parameters evolved as a compromise among stars, life and technology working together to produce offspring universes; he recalls the idea began with a Smolin book he read before college.⁠[8][9]

On October 17, 2020, he submitted the sole-authored paper Optoelectronic Intelligence to arXiv, arguing that hardware for general intelligence must draw on both neuroscience and very-large-scale integration and proposing photonics for communication and Josephson circuits for computation.⁠[10]

The paper later appeared in Applied Physics Letters; its synapse design detects a single near-infrared photon and, thanks to the dissipationless nature of superconductors, needs no power to retain its state.⁠[11]

He appeared on episode 225 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast; the episode page describes him as a NIST physicist, notes that his views do not represent NIST, and lists topics including processor manufacturing, superconductivity, computation and communication, neuromorphic computing, loop neurons, machine learning, cosmological natural selection and the rare Earth hypothesis.⁠[12]

In April 2022 he explained that the group’s work had moved from theoretical study to hardware experiments, with a recent result integrating superconducting single-photon detectors and Josephson junctions on one chip that runs in a cryostat, with optical fiber carrying signals from room temperature to the cold stage.⁠[13]

On January 14, 2025, he received the 2024 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for pioneering a neuromorphic computer that approaches the human brain in both interconnection count and low power; the citation also notes his math and science tutoring at an economically disadvantaged school through the AVID program and Brown University’s Beyer Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Service.⁠[14]

In September 2025 he announced Great Sky’s launch, with NIST having licensed the underlying intellectual property to the company; it had won $400,000 in DARPA’s Spark Tank competition and taped out and fabricated a first chip that classifies small images.⁠[2]

On March 13, 2026, Great Sky publicly debuted its superconducting optoelectronic technology and a $14 million seed round led by Bison Ventures with participation from Matchstick Ventures and Range Ventures; the company was founded by CEO Shainline, CTO Jeff Chiles, Saeed Khan and Bryce Primavera, and Tom Biegala and Mark Wade joined its board.⁠[15]

He said the chip costs only a fraction of existing approaches, removes the need to build data centers next to nuclear plants and can be installed in existing data centers; the company planned to begin supplying it that year.⁠[16]

In July 2026 a Great Sky project with Brookhaven National Laboratory was selected for Phase I of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, aiming over nine months to scale superconducting optoelectronic neural networks toward real-time fusion disruption prediction with DIII-D tokamak diagnostic data; the company said it had completed four chip tape-outs in 15 months for under $4 million.⁠[17]

In September 2026 he published The universe is fine-tuned for technology, not just life on IAI TV, arguing that the universe is fine-tuned not only for life but also for technology, and using this to support Lee Smolin’s proposal that universes reproduce.⁠[18]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.shainline.net/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

National Institute of Standards and Technology: Official website: https://www.nist.gov/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

Great Sky: Official website: https://www.greatsky.ai/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]