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Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop (2020)

Chapter: Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
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C

Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies

SPEAKERS

KAMRAN BEHNIA obtained his Ph.D. working on heavy-fermion systems in Grenoble. Dr. Behnia then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Geneva. In 1992, he was employed by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and spent 7 years working on organic and cuprate superconductors at Paris-Sud University. Since 2000, he has been based at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris. He is interested in collective quantum phenomena in a variety of solids ranging from semimetals to superconductors. His book Fundamentals of Thermoelectricity was recently published by Oxford University Press.

SEAN HARTNOLL obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Cambridge University. Dr. Hartnoll was a postdoctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara from 2006 to 2008, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Since 2010, he has been based at Stanford University and is currently an associate professor of physics working on problems in condensed matter, high energy, and gravitational physics. He has earned awards such as the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 2011, the Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Award in 2012, the DOE Presidential Early Career Award in 2014, and the New Horizons in Physics Prize in 2014.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×

JOSEPH HEREMANS received his B.S. in electrical engineering (1975) and his Ph.D. in applied physics (1978) from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. With a fellowship of the Belgian National Science Foundation, Dr. Heremans was a visiting scientist at the H.C. Ørsted Institute (University of Copenhagen), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Institute for Solid State Physics (University of Tokyo). He joined General Motors Research Laboratories in 1984 and became group leader of the Electro-optical Physics Group (1985) and manager of the Semiconductor Physics Section (1987). He moved to Delphi Corporation’s Research Labs in 1999, where he was a research fellow and managed the nanomaterials group. He is now a professor of physics and materials science and engineering at The Ohio State University, and an Ohio Eminent Scholar of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS, 1987), and received GM’s Kettering and Campbell Awards, and Delphi’s Scientific Excellence Award. His current research interests are the transport properties of nanomaterials and energy conversion.

N. PHUAN ONG obtained his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1976. Dr. Ong is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS). His current interests are Dirac semimetals, topological phases of matter, spin liquids, and superconductivity.

LUCILE SAVARY is a permanent CNRS researcher in condensed matter theory at ENS, Lyon. Dr. Savary completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Following that, she was a Gordon and Betty Moore postdoctoral fellow at MIT. She received the Block Award for Promising Young Scientists in 2014; was the University of California, Santa Barbara, Graduate Division Commencement Student Speaker in 2014; and earned the Michelson Postdoctoral Prize in 2016, the F. Nevill Mott Prize in 2017, and the Young Scientist Prize in Statistical Physics in 2019. Her research focuses on exotic phenomena in real systems, with an emphasis on frustrated magnetism. This includes quantum spin liquids, and in particular quantum spin ice, order-by-disorder, quantum criticality, the theory of RIXS, spin-orbital systems, thermal transport, and unconventional superconductivity in multiband spin-orbit coupled materials.

Moderator

ASHVIN VISHWANATH is a professor of physics at Harvard University. Dr. Vishwanath earned his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1996 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2001. Following

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×

a Pappalardo postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, he joined the physics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004, before moving to the Harvard University Physics Department in fall 2016. He is a theoretical physicist specializing in the study of condensed matter, and his research is currently focused on understanding how collective properties of matter such as superconductivity and magnetism arise from fundamental physical laws like quantum mechanics.

PLANNING COMMITTEE

AHARON KAPITULNIK, Chair, is the Theodore and Sydney Rosenberg Professor in Applied Physics at the Departments of Applied Physics and Physics at Stanford University. His research in experimental condensed matter physics covers a broad spectrum of phenomena associated with the behavior of correlated and disordered electron systems, particularly in reduced dimensions, and the development of effective instrumentation to detect subtle signatures of physical phenomena. His accomplishments include the development of the Sagnac Interferometer for sensitive detection of time-reversal symmetry breaking effects in solids, and its use for the study of unconventional superconductors, and novel cantilever-based instrumentation for testing the inverse-square-law of gravity at sub-mm distance. He has also been engaged in Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy studies of correlated electron systems and was one of the pioneers in applying this technique for the study of the cuprate superconductors and topological insulators. Among other recognitions, his activities earned him the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1986-1990), a Presidential Young Investigator Award (1987-1992), a Sackler Scholar at Tel-Aviv University (2006), the Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize for Superconductivity Experiment (2009), a RTRA (Le Triangle de la Physique) Senior Chair (2010), and the Oliver Buckley Condensed Matter Prize of the American Physical Society (2015). Dr. Kapitulnik is a member of the NAS, a fellow of the APS, and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Tel-Aviv University (1983).

PETER B. LITTLEWOOD is the director of the Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Littlewood came to Argonne in 2011 after being appointed associate laboratory director of Argonne’s Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate, which focuses on discovery science across a broad range of disciplines and on creating and understanding new materials and chemistries that address the grand challenges in energy and the environment. He also serves as a professor of physics in the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago. Before that, he spent 14 years at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, where he last served as the head of the Cavendish Laboratory and the Department of Physics. Dr. Littlewood started his career at Bell Laboratories, beginning in 1980 as a

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×

postdoctoral member of the technical staff; by 1992, he had worked his way up to head of Theoretical Physics Research. Dr. Littlewood is an internationally respected scientist who holds six patents; has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals; and has given more than 200 invited talks at international conferences, universities, and laboratories. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Institute of Physics, and APS, and is an associate member of the World Academy of Sciences.

TOM C. LUBENSKY is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lubensky’s primary research interests have been, and continue to be, theoretical condensed matter physics with emphasis on soft matter, liquid crystals, and, most recently, the new field of topological mechanics. He has spent his entire career, apart from postdoctoral positions at Orsay in Paris and Brown University, at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as a department chair from 2001 to 2009. He has held visiting positions at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and in Lyon, at the ESPCI in Paris, and at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of APS and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an honored member of the International Liquid Crystal Society. He is a recipient of the Sloan and Guggenheim fellowships and of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize of APS. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at Harvard University. He has served on a number of national and international committees, including National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviews of the Center for Neutron Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the 2018 Decadal Survey of Materials Science, and external reviews of several U.S. and international departments of physics. Dr. Lubensky is coauthor with Paul Chaikin of a prominent graduate-level textbook, Principles of Condensed Matter Physics.

DAVID MANDRUS is a professor of physics at the University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville. Dr. Mandrus is an experimentalist in the area of materials synthesis and crystal growth and also serves as faculty with the Materials Science and Technology Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he is group leader of the correlated electron materials group. His recent areas of research interest include (1) discovery and characterization of new unconventional superconductors; (2) discovery and characterization of new collective phenomena in transition metal oxides, especially involving slow dynamics; (3) neutron scattering investigations of exotic magnets; and (4) new materials for thermoelectric refrigeration and power generation. Dr. Mandrus is a fellow of APS and recipient of the UT-Battelle Scientific Research Award (2009), and has authored or coauthored more than 250 technical papers.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×

LESLIE MOMODA is currently the vice president for strategy at HRL Laboratories, LLC, in Malibu, California. Dr. Momoda leads the strategic planning, technology transfer activities, and customer and LLC member (Boeing and General Motors) interfaces for HRL. Prior to this assignment, she was the director for the Sensors and Materials Laboratory, where she led the research and development of advanced structural, battery, architected, and nano-materials and characterization as well as cutting-edge microelectromechanical sensors and infrared detector materials. As a research department manager, she was in charge of several major projects in the area of smart materials, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Compact Hybrid Actuation and Morphing Airframe Structures programs, materials for thermal management, gas sensing, fuel cell components, and the modeling and prediction of materials reliability. Dr. Momoda’s initial research focused on mixed metal oxide materials for electronic, optical, and chemical sensor applications. She received her B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Momoda has authored or coauthored 18 published papers and has 16 issued patents. She is also involved with engineering advisory boards at several Southern California universities.

THOMAS A. WITTEN is the Homer J. Livingston Professor of Physics in the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago. Dr. Witten is a theoretical physicist who specializes in the study of polymers, complex fluids, and aggregation phenomena, looking at the mathematical laws that govern these unconventional forms of matter. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of APS. Other honors include the APS 2002 Polymer Physics Prize and serving in 2010 as the Lorentz Professor at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×
Page 42
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×
Page 43
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×
Page 44
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Speaker and Planning Committee Biographies." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25549.
×
Page 46
Frontiers in Thermal Transport and Energy Conversion: Proceedings of a Workshop Get This Book
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Thermal transport and energy conversion has remained an active field for at least 200 years, with numerous opportunities for discoveries and new applications. Recently, experiments have advanced researchers' understanding of basic physics, and how new discoveries might translate into applications in energy, materials, quantum technologies, and other areas.

The National Academies convened a workshop on April 11, 2019 to identify and assess the frontier of current research in the field of thermal transport and energy conversion. Discussions involved topics related to thermal transport and quasi-particle hydrodynamics, thermal transport beyond the quasiparticle paradigm, the thermal hall effect from neutral spin excitations in frustrated quantum magnets, quantization of the thermal hall conductivity at small hall angles, and thermal spin transport, including spin-seebeck and magnon drag effects. These topics were strategically selected with the goal of uncovering key challenges, opportunities, and issues in order to guide future efforts and investments to advance the field. This publication offers a condensed summary of the discussions and presentations from the workshop, which was unclassified and open to the public.

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