Peter Schiffer

Peter Schiffer's profile

Peter Schiffer
Peter Schiffer

Professor

Professor Schiffer, a condensed matter experimentalist, received his bachelor's degree (with distinction) in physics from Yale University in 1988, and his PhD in physics from Stanford University in 1993, where his thesis adviser was Douglas Osheroff. After two years as a postdoctoral member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, he became an assistant professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame. He moved to Pennsylvania State University in 2000 as an associate professor of physics and was promoted to professor in 2003. In 2007, he was appointed associate vice president for research and director of strategic initiatives at Penn State.

He moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012 as vice chancellor for research and professor of physics.

Professor Schiffer received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the Army Research Office in 1997, a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation in 1997, and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow in 1998. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004 "for pioneering studies of novel magnetic materials including colossal magnotoresistance manganites and geometrically frustrated magnets."

Research Area: Experimental condensed matter physics; measurements of magnetic oxides, geometrically frustrated magnets, and magnetic nanostructures

Description of Current Research

Novel magnetic materials are important technologically and also provide excellent model systems in which to explore new physics. Current research topics under study by Professor Schiffer's group include geometrically frustrated magnets, in which the spins enter cooperative spin liquid and spin ice phases at low temperatures; exotic oxides that display both magnetic and electronic order; and frustrated lattices of interacting ferromagnetic nanostructures, in which the local accommodation of frustration can be directly observed through magnetic force microscopy.

For more information

Honors and awards

  • Fellow, American Physical Society, 2004
  • Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, 1998
  • Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Army Research Office, 1997
  • National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 1997

Selected Publications

Contact Information

Office
214 Seitz Materials Research Lab

Email
pschiffe@illinois.edu

Areas of Research