News


April 2024 – Big congratulations to Trenton for winning the 3-year NSF GRFP Award!! Well done, Trenton! We are proud of you!

March 2024 – Greeshma’s 2nd paper as the lead author is published in J. Phys.: Condens. Matter. Great job and congratulations!

February 2024 – Welcome Lauren Elliott to our group as an undergraduate researcher!

February 2024 – Welcome Daniel Hollingsworth to our group as an undergraduate research assistant!

January 2024 – Congratulations to Andrew Choi, our high school summer intern, for being accepted to the University of Pennsylvania!

January 2024 – Congratulations to Bennett for being accepted to the Ph.D. program with a fellowship at the Chemistry Department, Michigan State University! Great Job!

September 2023 – Our PPMS-DynaCool is operational. We are excited about this new experimental capability! This allows us to study material properties under combined extreme environments including low temperature, high magnetic field, and external pressure.

August 2023 – Greeshma and Bennett worked hard at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory to test a unique custom-designed cryostat (in collaboration with Sector 3 and DAC Tools) for high-pressure research.

July 2023 – Finally we have moved into the new lab in the Science and Engineering Complex. We are excited for a fresh start!

July 2023 – Farewell to Sudeshna. Thanks for contributing to the group and good luck with your future endeavors!

June 2023 – Congratulations to Greeshma’s first publication on high-pressure studies of magnetism, valence, and crystal lattice in EuCd2As2!

May 2023 – Welcome Isaac Mendez to our group as a REU summer research student!

May 2023 – Greeshma, Trenton, and Hunter participated in the SMS/CONUSS WORKSHOP at the Argonne National Laboratory to learn time-domain synchrotron Moessbauer spectroscopy and data analysis using CONUSS.

May 2023 – Greeshma receives an award from the Alabama EPSCoR Graduate Research Scholars Program to support her research. Congratulations!

May 2023 – Welcome Bennett Gamble, a UAB Chemistry major, to our group as an undergraduate research assistant!

April 2023 – Congratulations to Trenton for winning the NASA Alabama Space Grant Undergraduate Scholarship, well done!

March 2023 – We had another productive beamtime at Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab. This is our last beamtime before APS shutdown for upgrade starting from April. Thank you, Hunter and Raimundas for the very hard work and great teamwork!

March 2023 – Dr. Bi participated NSF EPSCoR Workshop on Quantum Computing, Information, Science, and Engineering (qCISE) at NSF, Alexandria, VA.

March 2023 – Sudeshna and Raimundas attended the APS March Meeting in Las Vegas, NV and presented our recent results on high-pressure studies of EuSn2As2 and EuMnSb2.

Jan. 2023 – Welcome Hunter Kantelis as a graduate student to our group! Hunter was an NSF REU student with us in the Summer of 2022. We are excited to have Hunter back! Now our group size doubles in a year!

Dec. 2022 – Another productive beamtime at the Advanced Photon Source. Thank you Raimundas, Trenton, and Hunter for your hard work and dedication! There is no better way to end the year than going home with many experimental data!

September 2022 – Dr. E. Ercan Alp from the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory visited us and gave a colloquium talk at UAB Physics.   

August 2022 – We are awarded by the NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program for the acquisition of a Quantum Design Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS-DynaCool). Check out the story here and here. The PPMS will allow us to study phase transitions under pressure and strain conditions at temperatures of 1.9-400K and a magnetic field up to 9 T. Look forward to having the PPMS!

August 2022 – Welcome Dr. Sudeshna Samanta and Dr. Raimundas Sereika to our group as postdoc scholars!

July 2022- We had another productive experimental trip conducting two types of high-pressure experiments, X-ray diffraction and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab. Many thanks for the hard work of Greeshma, Haozhe, and Hunter!

June 2022 – Our recent paper on high-pressure studies of topological magnet EuSn2P2 is highlighted on HPCAT website and APS, ANL.

June 2022- We are happy to host Haozhe Wang and Jose Gonzalez Jimenez, graduate students from Prof. Weiwei Xie’s group at Rutgers University, for a week-long visit to our group!

Hunter, Haozhe, and Jose happily posing for pictures.
Group photo after a fun week working together. From left to right: Hunter, Greeshma, Haozhe, and Jose.

May 2022 – Welcome Hunter Kantelis from the University of South Florida to join our group as an undergraduate researcher supported by NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program!

March 2022 – Congratulations to Trenton Culverhouse for acceptance to the prestigious DOE Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) Program! Trenton will be working at Argonne National Laboratory during the summer of 2022. Have a productive summer, Trenton!

December 2021 – Congratulations to Greeshma Jose and Trenton Culverhouse for conducting their very first set of in-person synchrotron X-ray experiments at three beamlines at APS, ANL! Great job and thanks for the hard work!

August 2021 – Congratulations to Zachary Nix for receiving the GAANN Fellowship! More information about this fellowship can be found here.

July 2021 – Zachary Nix successfully defended his master thesis and is ready to move on to his Ph.D. research in our group. Congratulations and well done!

July 2021 – Congratulations to Trenton Culverhouse for completing the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at UAB physics!

June 2021 – We have received the NSF CAREER Award. This award will support our research project on high-pressure studies of quantum states in magnetic topological systems.

January 2021 – We have received the NSF EPSCoR RII-Track 4 grant which supports our research on magnetic topological insulators using synchrotron X-ray techniques.

September 2020 – our first remote experiment on high-pressure X-ray diffraction at APS, ANL went smoothly!

May 2020 – we have been funded by the UAB Faculty Development Grant Program, a seed grant to support our studies of quantum phase transitions in magnetic topological insulators.

February 2020 – our second experimental trip to APS, ANL. During the 10-day long experiments, we successfully performed several experiments at 3 beamlines (3ID-B, 16ID-D, and 13BM-C).

December 2019 – our first experimental trip to APS, ANL since Dr. Bi joined UAB. The 9-day beamtime was productive, and we successfully conducted two experiments at two different beamlines (3ID-B and 13BM-C)!