Vidya Madhavan invested as Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering

In recognition of her outstanding research, Illinois Physics Professor Vidya Madhavan has been named a Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering by The Grainger Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Named appointments are among the highest recognitions faculty members can receive and are conferred in perpetuity. An investiture ceremony was held for Madhavan on October 28, 2024, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Madhavan is an experimental condensed matter physicist who has contributed to our greater understanding of unconventional superconductors, topological materials, strongly correlated electrons, and transition metal dichalogenides. In her laboratory at the Materials Research Laboratory, her team grows its own 2D thin-film material samples, which enable highly controlled experiments that reveal the underpinnings of emergent phenomena.

Over the course of her career, Madhavan has developed innovative spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy techniques that have shed light on the interaction between spin, charge, and structure in quantum materials such as unconventional superconductors, topological systems, and two-dimensional materials. 

Madhavan studies quantum systems with long lifetimes, for applications in quantum information science. She is particularly interested in Mott insulators, which can be fabricated using exfoliation and controlled using lithography. She has demonstrated that they can achieve lifetimes of a few seconds at room temperature.

Madhavan is the recipient of numerous accolades. She was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (since 2015) and of the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research (since 2021). She was named a 2020 Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Investigator. And she was selected for a 2007 National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Madhavan received a bachelor of science degree in metallurgical engineering in 1991 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and a master of technology degree in solid state materials in 1993 from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. She received her doctoral degree from Boston University in 2000. She held a postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1999 to 2002, before joining the physics faculty at Boston College in 2002. She joined the faculty at Illinois Physics in 2014 as a full professor.

The Willett professorships are funded by the Willett Research Initiative fund, which honors the memory of Donald Biggar Willett (1897–1981), who attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 1916–1921. In 1994, the initiative was established by a gift from the estate of his widow, Elizabeth Willett, and recognizes Mr. Willett’s admiration for the college. Mr. Willett left the university before graduation, just six credits short of completing his degree in civil engineering. After leaving the university, he started his career as a partner in the family business, Suburban Coal and Supply Company, located in California. Later, he worked as a self-employed bookkeeper and tax preparer.