Sinéad Majella Griffin (born July 20, 1986) is an Irish physicist working at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid State of matter, phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and elec ...

and

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

. 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 in ...

Award in General Physics.

Early life

Griffin was born in 1986 in

Rush, County Dublin Rush ( ), officially ''An Ros'', is a small seaside commuter town in Fingal, County Dublin, Ireland. Rush lies on the Irish Sea coast, between Skerries and Lusk, and has a small harbour. It had a population at the 2022 census of 10,875. Rus ...

, Ireland.

Education

Griffin studied physics at

Trinity College, Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Univ ...

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

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

for her master's studies, working with Ray Rivers on

topological defect In mathematics and physics, solitons, topological solitons and topological defects are three closely related ideas, all of which signify structures in a physical system that are stable against perturbations. Solitons do not decay, dissipate, dispe ...

s in condensed matter and cosmology. She worked at the

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, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

, for her doctoral studies, studying superconductors and

spintronics Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics), also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-st ...

with

Nicola Spaldin Nicola Ann Spaldin (born 1969)Nicola Spaldin's FRS is professor of materials science 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 ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

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

Hubbard model The Hubbard model is an Approximation, approximate model used to describe the transition between Conductor (material), conducting and Electrical insulation, insulating systems. It is particularly useful in solid-state physics. The model is named ...

for hexagonal

manganite Manganite is a mineral composed of manganese oxide-hydroxide, MnO(OH), crystallizing in the monoclinic system (pseudo-orthorhombic). Crystals of manganite are prismatic and deeply striated parallel to their length; they are often grouped togethe ...

s. 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 recognized 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 polari ...

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

Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...

, testing phenomena that occur on galactic scales with those that occur in a laboratory. Her work explored symmetry-breaking conditions that lead to topological defects. Griffin has also worked on materials for high-energy physics experiments. In 2023, she won the Early Career Scientist Prize in Computational Physics from the

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP; ) is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the ...

. In the same year, Griffin published an

arXiv arXiv (pronounced as "archive"—the X represents the Chi (letter), Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not Scholarly pee ...

preprint, presenting density functional theory augmented with a on-site Hubbard-like model (i.e., DFT+U) calculations of Cu-substituted lead phosphate apatite (i.e., suspected structure of

LK-99 LK-99 also called PCPOSOS, is a gray–black, polycrystalline compound, identified as a copper- doped lead‒oxyapatite. A team from Korea University led by Lee Sukbae () and Kim Ji-Hoon () began studying this material as a potential supercond ...

), identifying correlated isolated flat bands at the Fermi level, a debated signature of superconductors. Per the author, this work did not show that

is a superconductor at room temperature, but suggested the possibility of a room temperature superconductivity. Her findings propose a simplified two-band model for understanding this behavior in

, and potentially other superconductors. Similar theory preprints by other academics and researchers did not entirely agree with Griffin's results.

References

External links

* * https://foundry.lbl.gov/about/staff/sinead-griffin/
Personal Research Website

Google Scholar Profile
{{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