Gerardo Ortiz is a professor of physics and scientific director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Center at Indian University Bloomington. His scientific career has spanned a wide variety of topics in condensed matter physics and quantum information science, including electron fluids and solids, strongly correlated systems, quantum Hall physics, high-temperature superconductivity, quantum critical phenomena, and topological quantum matter, among others. 

After receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Ortiz continued his career in the United States as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and later as an Oppenheimer fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he served as a permanent staff member until 2006.