Sinéad Majella Griffin (born 1986) is an Irish physicist working at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

on high energy physics and condensed matter. She won the 2017

Swiss Physical Society The Swiss Physical Society (SPS) (German: Schweizerische Physikalische Gesellschaft / SPG, French: Société Suisse de Physique / SSP) is a Swiss professional society promoting physics in Switzerland. It was founded in May 1908. SPS is involved i ...

Award in General Physics.

Early life

Griffin was born in 1986 in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

, Ireland.

Education

Griffin studied physics at

Trinity College, Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

, graduating in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in theoretical physics. She moved to

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

for her master's studies, working with Ray Rivers on topological defects in condensed matter and cosmology. She worked at

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

for her doctoral studies, studying superconductors and spintronics with

Nicola Spaldin Nicola Ann Spaldin (born 1969)Nicola Spaldin's FRS is Professor of Materials Theory at ETH Zurich, known for her pioneering research on multiferroics. Education and early life A native of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England, Spaldin earned a ...

. When Nicola Spaldin joined

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

, Griffin accompanied her, earning a PhD in 2014 looking at the

Hubbard model The Hubbard model is an approximate model used to describe the transition between conducting and insulating systems. It is particularly useful in solid-state physics. The model is named for John Hubbard. The Hubbard model states that each el ...

for hexagonal manganites. During her PhD she tested the

Kibble–Zurek mechanism The Kibble–Zurek mechanism (KZM) describes the non-equilibrium dynamics and the formation of topological defects in a system which is driven through a continuous phase transition at finite rate. It is named after Tom W. B. Kibble, who pioneered th ...

in YMnO₃. She won the 2015 Materials and Processes (MaP) Award for the best interdisciplinary thesis at ETH Zurich.

Career

In 2015 Griffin joined Jeffrey Neaton's laboratory at

. She was awarded the 2017

award in General Physics for her contributions to material theory. She recognised that

multiferroic Multiferroics are defined as materials that exhibit more than one of the primary ferroic properties in the same phase: * ferromagnetism – a magnetisation that is switchable by an applied magnetic field * ferroelectricity – an electric polarisa ...

hexagonal manganites exhibited the same symmetry as those proposed shortly after the

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

, testing phenomena that occur on galactic scales with those that occur in a laboratory. She is interested in the symmetry-breaking conditions that lead to topological defects. She was an invited speaker at the 2018

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

Rising Stars in Physics Workshop. In 2016 she won the

Falling Walls The Falling Walls Conference is an annual science event in Berlin, Germany, that coincides with the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall (9 November 1989). The one-day scientific conference showcases the research work of international scient ...

lab Bay Area competition looking for future breakthroughs. She has appeared in the Uncharted: Berkeley Festival of Ideas. Griffin is also an artist, and has exhibited her work in Ireland, Zurich, London and San Francisco.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Griffin, Sinead 1986 births Living people Irish physicists Irish expatriates in England Irish expatriates in Switzerland Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Alumni of Imperial College London ETH Zurich alumni Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people