Theory Colloquium: Nano-engineering from a Theoretical Physics Perspective

Short Biography:

Andrei Bernevig is an outstanding Romanian theoretical physicist and professor at Princeton University. His research focuses on quantum condensed matter physics, particularly the application of topology in solid-state systems. He has made significant contributions to the understanding of topological insulators, superconductors, and the fractional quantum Hall effect. His work also extends to high-temperature superconductivity in iron-based materials and the classification of topological phases in quantum systems. Moreover, he is the author of the text book "Topological Insulators and Superconductors" from Princeton University Press (2013).

Bernevig studied physics and mathematics at Stanford University, earning his Ph.D. under the supervision of Shoucheng Zhang in 2006. He joined Princeton University as a postdoctoral researcher and became a faculty member there in 2009, rising to the rank of full professor. He has also held positions at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle (Saale) and the Freie Universität Berlin (with an Alexander-von-Humboldt-Professorship that he received in 2018).

His achievements have been widely recognized with numerous awards, including the Sackler Prize (2014), the New Horizons in Physics Prize (2016), the Guggenheim Fellowship (2017) and the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials (2019). In 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and in 2023 he received the prestigious Europhysics Prize from the European Physical Society.