Frances Hellman received her BA in Physics from Dartmouth College in 1978, graduating summa cum laude and phi beta kappa with high honors in physics. She received her PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1985, studying what were then considered the high Tc superconductors (the A15's). After a 2 year postdoc in thin film magnetism at AT&T Bell Labs, she went to UCSD as an assistant professor in 1987, where she received tenure in 1994 and became a full professor in 2000. She joined the Physics Dept at UC Berkeley in Jan 2005, and became Chair of the Department in 2007. She...
Naomi S. Ginsberg is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Faculty Scientist in the Materials Sciences and Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Imaging Divisions at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she has been since 2010. She currently focuses on elucidating the electronic and molecular dynamics in a wide variety of soft electronic and biological materials by devising new electron and optical imaging modalities that enable characterization of fast and ultrafast processes at the nanoscale and as a function of their...
James Analytis joined the faculty in January 2013 as the Charles Kittel Chair in condensed matter physics, and served as Department Chair from 2020-2023. He received his B.Sc. in physics from Canterbury University in 2001 and his D. Phil. from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes' Scholar in 2006. At Oxford, he worked with Stephen Blundell and Arzhang Ardavan on experimental and computational studies of quasi-two dimensional organic superconductors. Following his graduate studies, Analytis was a Lloyd's Tercentenary Fellow at the University of Bristol, where he worked on...
Yuan Cao is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science starting July 2024. He obtained bachelor's degree at University of Science and Technology of China in 2014, and master's degree and Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016 and 2020 respectively. From 2021 to 2024, he served as a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, before joining Berkeley as faculty.
His primary research interest is in the electrical, optical, and mechanical properties of low-dimensional materials, and how to engineer these properties and find applications for them using...
The elements in the periodic table are divided into metals, semimetals and non-metals. The distinction is based on their chemical and physical properties and is determined, in particular, by the movement of electrons and the materials' ability to conduct electrical energy: metals are excellent conductors, semimetals have...
Illustration of two sites of graphene lattice. Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers
Princeton scientists are using innovative techniques to visualize electrons in graphene, a single atomic layer of carbon atoms. They are finding that strong interactions between electrons in high magnetic fields drive them to form unusual crystal-like structures similar to...
Arnold and Barbara Silverman Distinguished Professor of Physics, Materials Science and Engineering, and Public Policy, Chancellor Emeritus
Professor Birgeneau received his Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University in 1966 with Professor Werner Wolf. He was on the faculty of Yale for one year and then spent one year at Oxford University. He was at Bell Laboratories from 1968 to 1975 and then went to MIT in September 1975 as Professor of Physics. In 1988 he became head of the department and in 1991 became Dean of Science at MIT. In 2000, he became President of the University of Toronto. In 2004 he became UC Berkeley’s Chancellor and joined the Physics faculty. He concluded his service as Chancellor at the end of May 2013 and is now...
Image of a phonon-engineered superconducting qubit.
A team of eleven investigators at LBNL led by Assistant Professor Alp Sipahigil have been awarded $8,000,000 by DOE to develop ultrahigh frequency phononics for next generation superconducting...
