Sebastian group

Suchitra Sebastian

Suchitra is Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. She holds an MS and PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad). Suchitra was previously a Junior Research Fellow in Physics at Trinity College, and subsequently a Royal Society University Research Fellow. Suchitra’s research seeks to discover exotic quantum phases of matter in advanced materials. To this end, her research involves tuning the organisation of electrons within these materials by subjecting them to extreme conditions including low temperatures, high applied pressures, and ultra-large magnetic fields. Under these conditions, experiments reveal new material universes in which billions and billions of electrons interact with each other to reveal surprising and unpredictable macroscopic quantum entangled phases.

Suchitra’s research group has made discoveries of novel quantum phenomena that have overturned decades-old wisdom, which include creating high temperature iron-based superconductors under applied pressure, establishing a new field of unconventional insulators that display Fermi surfaces once thought to be the preserve of metals, uncovering novel quantum phase transitions in systems from quantum magnets to cuprate superconductors, and revealing a new strange metal phase in the cuprate high temperature superconductors. Suchitra participates in scientific research solely for non-imperialistic, non-militaristic purposes.

A general audience overview of Suchitra’s research can be found here:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160609-suchitra-sebastians-quantum-explorations/

Patricia Alireza

Patricia did an MS in Physics at the University of California at Los Angeles, after which she did a PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge. She received the L’Oreal-UNESCO fellowship for women in science in 2009. She is currently a research associate with particular expertise in extremely high pressure techniques.

Samar Layek

Samar has completed an MS and PhD in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. He then moved to Tel Aviv University, Israel as a post doctoral fellow. His current research mostly focuses on the behaviour of the electronic transitions in strongly correlated systems at high pressure using diamond anvil cells.

Alex Eaton

Alex completed an MPhys at the University of Manchester in 2018, where his masters project focused on thermodynamically driving the metamagnetic phase transition of equiatomic FeRh thin films. As part of his undergraduate degree he also spent a year abroad at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where his experimental work included investigating the phase diagrams of relaxor ferroelectrics. He is now undertaking a PhD examining the response of strongly correlated electron systems to an applied uniaxial strain, with the support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Gilles Rodway-Gant

Gilles completed a bachelor degree in physics at the University of Oxford before travelling to Germany and undertaking a 2-year masters at LMU Munich. His masters research focused on designing and creating 2D heterostructures for spintronic applications. For his PhD, he is studying Fermi surfaces of correlated insulators.

Kalaiselvan Ganesan

Dr Kalaiselvan has a PhD in Materials Science from Bharathidasan University, Tamil Nadu, India. He moved to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, United States as a postdoctoral Fellow in 2017. He is currently working as a Research Associate, specialising in extremely high-pressure techniques using DAC to study strongly correlated electron systems.

Teoh (Matthew) Ken Heng

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Nicholas Popiel

Nicholas completed his undergraduate degree in Physics and Integrated Science from the University of Western Ontario in 2020. Nicholas’ undergraduate researched involved using principles of statistical and quantum mechanics to model and simulate the dynamics of the brain in healthy and pathological patients. He is now working towards his MPhil studying magnetic and electrical transport properties of unconventional insulators.

Alex Hickey

Alex did an undergraduate masters in Oxford, cumulating with a project on the effect of doping on the multiferroic phase of copper oxide. After he worked as a researcher in the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team. There he worked on projects looking at applying statistical methods or quantum effects to possible space missions. He is now doing a PhD on cuprate superconductors with the support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Hsu (Indy) Liu

Indy completed his BA in Physics at Reed College in Portland, OR, USA. As part of his undergraduate degree, he wrote a senior thesis on orbital antiferromagnetism. He is now doing a PhD to study Fermi surfaces of Kondo insulators.

Alex Davies

Alex completed an MSci in Chemistry at the University of Bristol. During his undergraduate degree, he studied magnetic-field induced polymorphism in organic metals. He is now doing a PhD to study high temperature superconductors using high magnetic fields, with the support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Sofia Taylor

Sofia comes from Caracas, Venezuela, where she did her undergraduate in Physics at the Venezuelan Central University. During her undergraduate degree she did magnetic penetration depth measurements on novel superconductors. Sofia’s PhD studies involved investigating high temperature superconductors at high pressures, with the support of the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability.

Michael Aling

Michael completed a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Physics at the University of California Santa Barbara in 2019, where his research focused on the growth and characterisation of quantum materials. Primarily involved in the design of a new high-pressure laser floating zone furnace and studies of Sr3 (Ir(1-x)Ru(x))2 O7, he also co-led a student project to produce an assistive walking device for a girl with cerebral palsy and spent time at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in carbon-capture research. With the support of the Churchill Scholarship, he undertook an MPhil designing a new temperature-compensated piezoelectric strain cell capable of operating in narrow high-field magnet bores.

Máté Hartstein

Máté did an MPhys in Physics at the University of Oxford. He is now doing a PhD on Fermi surface studies of strongly correlated electron systems with the support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Yu-Te Hsu

After completing a Bachelor in Materials Sciences at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan in 2008, Yu Te arrived in Sweden to do a Masters degree in Materials Physics at Linköping University. Here he developed an interest in materials that have prospects for sustainability and energy applications. He started his PhD in 2013 funded by a Government Scholarship from Ministry of Education, Taiwan. His current research focuses on an understanding of copper-oxide high-temperature superconductor using advanced experimental techniques and extreme conditions.