Vivaan is a rising sophomore who joined the lab back in his freshman year. Most of that time has gone into becoming the lab's go-to person for the QSM (Qblox Quantum Source and Measurement module), an eight-channel box that lives inside the Qblox Cluster rack and does the actual physical work of talking to a device at the bottom of the fridge: it sources the tiny voltages that gate a sample and reads back the current that comes through it, down to the nanoamp level. Basically, if a pinch-off curve or a bias sweep has ever shown up on a lab computer screen, the QSM is the box that made it happen.

Like any piece of specialized lab equipment, the QSM setup isn't perfect right now. There's an unresolved measurement glitch the team is still chasing down, and separately, part of the physical wiring between the fridge and the instrument isn't well documented, which makes it easy for someone unfamiliar with the setup to make a costly mistake.

Vivaan has taken ownership of both problems. He works closely with his labmates to test and narrow down the source of the measurement issue, and he stays in touch with the instrument's manufacturer to help get it properly fixed. On the wiring side, he has become the person everyone checks with before touching that part of the setup, and he is working to turn that knowledge into something everyone can reference instead of relying on him directly.