I'm now a professor!
Work is beginning on my lab at Northwestern! I will keep a diary of the exciting progress here .
At some point recently I appeared on the faculty directory for Northwestern MSE. Things are getting real!
Today I received a promotion to a Associate Scientist position at SLAC. I'm excited to be more involved with the Department of Energy but I'll still be around the Stanford campus most days!
Today my last 1st author paper (I think) with the University of Geneva was published. You can read the open access version here. We studied the effects of quantum tuning on a first order phase transition in a correlated oxide system. There's all my favourite techniques in this paper - STEM-EELS, Raman, DFT+DMFT, resonant XRD and mu-SR. Very proud of this work!
Our paper on intrinsic magnetism in superconducting nickelates - as shown by muon spin rotation experiments - is out!
Read it here on the Nature Physics website or use this link if you don't have access.
These were tough experiments with a lot of preparation involved so I'm really happy to have this finally published! Press release to come.
Had an awesome time at the American Physical Society March Meeting. My talk was well-received, I had many stimulating discussions with old friends and new friends. And, as is tradition, ate far too much food.
My talk is still available on the APS virtual meeting platform until June, check it out if you missed it.
We've just put a pre-print online! We report that the newly-discovered superconducting nickelates are intrinsically magnetic. "Intrinsically" means the observed magnetism cannot come from impurity phases or interfacial/surface effects (these things sometimes do occur!). Read more about it here, fingers crossed for a published version in the near future.
Had a lot of fun writing this perspective article with some postdoctoral colleagues on the topic of the intersection between metal-insulator transitions (taking nickelates as an example) and artificial intelligence. AI is not a subject I knew much about before writing this so I am eternally indebted to my collaborators for educating me!
It was so nice to work with my former colleague Javier del Valle on his recent experiments published in Physical Review B. He, along with collaborators in Paris, show that the dynamics of an electrically-triggered insulator-metal transition depend a lot on how the thermally-triggered transition looks.
Today I gave an in-person talk at the International Workshop on Oxide Electronics in Genoa, Italy. It was so nice to see lots of familiar faces again, albeit under masks! I had a great time presenting two of our recent papers that use photon-based science to investigate ultrathin structures. Grazie to the organisers.
APL Materials have selected our recent article as an Editor's Pick and have written a neat Scilight article about our work.
New paper in APL Materials ! We used Raman spectroscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy to look at what's happening in mixtures of compounds that are structurally similar but not identical.
As of today I started my postdoctoral position in the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials at Stanford. Time to get to work, watch this space!
Officially my last day at the University of Geneva! I will continue to keep in touch with the Triscone group, following their exciting projects and helping out when I can. I will miss everyone!
New paper! Our STEM superstar, Bernat, has produced beautiful EELS results on nickelate superlattices showing metal-insulator phase coexistence. In Nano Letters.
Organising a virtual conference is no mean feat but at least we didn't have to leave the comfort of our homes! QUOROM-3 is over, roll on the next one!
I have been awarded a Postdoc.Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation with the highest evaluation score. This award will fund my research abroad for two years. Eternally grateful to the SNSF for this chance! This is going to be quite a year.