Entitled “Dipolar Shielding and Sub-wavelength Bilayers in a Quantum Gas of Dysprosium”, Michael Cantara‘s thesis details the building of a new atomic physics laboratory in the group of Professor Wolfgang Ketterle. Dr. Cantara’s research included confining dipolar atoms in ultra-tight optical lattices to suppress spin-relaxation, as well as the creation of a novel confinement scheme to achieve 60 nm separations of dipolar-coupled atomic layers. With applications to quantum computing and sensing, future results from the group will expand upon his work to study novel dipolar quantum gates.