Christian Kurtsiefer received his PhD in experimental physics in 1997 in the field of atom interferometry from the University of Konstanz, Germany. After a postdoc stint at IBM Almaden research center in San Jose, CA, he became a scientific staff member in the Physics Department at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich from 1999 to 2003. He joined the Physics Department of NUS in 2003, and was one of the founding members of CQT in 2007. He is elected fellow of the American Physical Society and past president of the Institute of Physics Singapore.

His main research interests are in quantum optics and atomic physics, with an emphasis on experimental quantum information and communication, single photon technologies and atom-light interaction. Recent work is focused on single photon technologies like practical QKD systems, atom-photon interfaces, hybrid quantum systems, and quantum randomness sources.