Alan conducts and manages activities in the areas of precision quantum sensing, semiconductor device physics and hardware security. His academic specialty is in the area of ultrafast optical sciences and he has developed state-of-art semiconductor-based frequency combs, mode-locked lasers, and miniature low-drift atomic clocks while at SRI. He is currently leading a team of scientists and engineers to develop novel quantum sensors such as low-SWAP magnetometers, compact cold-atom systems and wide-tunable-bandwidth Rydberg receivers. Many of these technical innovations have come from the support of far-reaching Government-sponsored programs that Dr. Braun has led including the DARPA AMBIIENT, QUIVER, ACES, CSAC and PACT programs.

Dr. Braun holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences from the University of Michigan and a post-doctoral fellowship at Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée/Ecole Polytechnique prior to coming to SRI.