Blusson QMI Scientific Director and Professor at UBC Department of Physics & Astronomy Andrea Damascelli has been awarded UBC’s premier award for research, the Jacob Biely Research Prize.
Damascelli also serves as a Tier I Canada Research Chair in the Electronic Structure of Quantum Materials and co-director of the Max Planck-UBC-UTokyo Centre for Quantum Materials.
Image: Andrea Damascelli, Scientific Director, Blusson QMI. Image by Paul Joseph.
“Andrea’s research on the electronic structure of quantum materials has bolstered and refocused the international community, making Canada a leader in photoelectron spectroscopy. His study of superconducting cuprates and other novel complex oxides, as well as his research on the ultrafast dynamics of quantum materials, are groundbreaking,” said Blusson QMI Professor Emeritus George Sawatzky.
“Under Andrea’s leadership, QMI has become a research powerhouse, bringing together physicists, chemists, and engineers to collaborate on R&D projects advancing the field and training the future quantum workforce.”
An experimental physicist, Damascelli is a leading scientist in the field of quantum materials, which are systems positioned to drive the next transformative technological revolution across diverse areas from health to clean energy and quantum information.
As Blusson QMI’s Scientific Director, he led UBC’s effort, which resulted in the $66.5 million award from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund for Quantum Materials and Future Technologies in 2015. Under his leadership, Blusson QMI became UBC’s first Global Research Excellence Institute (GREx) in 2016.
“It’s an honour to receive the Jacob Biely Research Prize from the UBC community. I extend my gratitude to UBC, the Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation, Faculty of Science, Department of Physics & Astronomy, and the Blusson QMI community for supporting me and investing in this endeavour throughout the years,” Damascelli said.
“I would also like to thank the students, postdocs, and senior scientists who have worked in my group, as well as our many collaborators at Blusson QMI, for their fantastic work and achievements. This award recognizes and celebrates our teamwork and shared success.”
Damascelli develops and utilizes angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and its time- and spin-resolved variants, as well as resonant x-ray scattering (RXS), to push the limits of these techniques and gain a deeper understanding of quantum materials and new phases of matter, with emphasis on superconducting cuprates, ruthenates, and other correlated oxides.
Leveraging facilities established at QMI in the UBC-Moore Centre for Ultrafast Quantum Matter and the Quantum Materials Spectroscopy Centre at the Canadian Light Source, he pursues the engineering of the electronic structures of these materials through in situ adatom deposition, strain, and the optical coherent control of electronic states via pulsed laser excitations.
With more than 150 papers published, more than 19,000 citations, and an h-index of 59 (Google Scholar), Damascelli’s work on quantum materials has gained global recognition, positioning Canada as a leader in the field of photoelectron spectroscopy.
His work has been recognized with the prestigious Sloan, Killam, and NSERC’s Steacie Memorial Fellowships, the Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation, and the Canadian Association of Physicists’ DCMMP Brockhouse Medal.
Damascelli is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Physics Society, the Max Planck Graduate Centre for Quantum Materials, a Kavli Fellow of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a Senior Fellow of the CIFAR Quantum Materials Program.
The Jacob Biely Research Prize is awarded annually to a full-time tenure-stream UBC faculty member in recognition of a distinguished record of research that has substantially enhanced UBC’s stature as a leading research institution.
Learn more about advances in TR-ARPES here.
Read more about this year’s UBC award winners here.
