Research Interests
Our broad research program is oriented towards studying properties of novel materials and devices, with a particular emphasis in understanding the organizational principles leading to novel states of matter.

We are particularly interested in physical phenomena whose understanding is intellectually challenging but which could have an enormous economical impact if observed at room temperature, such as high temperature superconductivity (funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences - Department of Energy) and/or multiferroiticity.

The observation of Dirac Fermions in Graphene (leading to the 2010 Nobel prize in Physics) and more recently of Dirac magnetic monopoles in dipolar spin-ices, demonstrates that fundamental physical concepts/entities normally associated with high energy physics, can also be effectively studied in matter when in its solid state. We are actively engaged in these beautiful fields of research.

Other major areas of research within our group include novel and unconventional magnetic states of matter such as Bose-Einstein condensates of spin degrees of freedom, or the fluctuating ground states of geometrically frustrated magnetic systems, or the so-called spin-liquids.

A student working in our group is expected to learn a broad array of experimental techniques, ranging from sample synthesis, to high magnetic field experimentation to spectroscopic techniques such as neutron and x-ray scattering or nuclear magnetic resonance. She/he is also expected to be involved in active collaborations with both theorists and experimentalists belonging either to the NHMFL or to external/international institutions, and in this way define her/his own research path based on personal interests.