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Everyday physicist
Joerg Schmalian says his research focuses on everyday experiences
in physics.
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A simple office window.
To you and me it's just glass. But it’s not so simple to Joerg Schmalian,
associate professor of physics and astronomy and physicist with the Ames
Laboratory.
"It's (the glass window) much more interesting than you would think,"
he said. "Glass is in a constant state of flow."
Schmalian explains that if everything remained constant, in a couple of
million years the glass would slowly drip down.
"I spend a lot of time trying to understand this phenomenon,"
he said, "and try to understand other systems which behave in many
ways like glasses.
"Out of this type of research you can generate new materials,"
he continued. "It's very interesting to look at this type of phenomena
with many new experiments."
Schmalian's research activities are in theoretical condensed matter physics.
"My main interest is in the investigation of strongly correlated
quantum mechanical many body systems, particularly their new collective
behavior emerging due to competing interactions," he said. "Using
quantum statistical mechanics and many body theory, I am working on phenomena
like superconductivity, quantum phase transitions, magnetism, disordered
systems and non-equilibrium dynamics as well as quantum effects in glassy
systems."
These research areas pose many new experimental and theoretical challenges.
Schmalian's research has also earned him the praise of three members of
the National Academy of Sciences who indicated that Schmalian has made
important contributions to his field. The three wrote recommendations
on Schmalian's behalf when he was nominated, and eventually selected,
for the ISU Foundation Award for Early Achievement in Research. That award
recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding accomplishments
in research usually early in his or her professional career.
Schmalian has published almost 50 original research articles in referred
scientific journals. He has also published 13 papers presented at national
and international conferences.
A major impact of Schmalian's work is the citation rate of his work in
others' original research papers - nearly 125 citations per year.
"One of the big challenges," Schmalian said, "is that many
people in the world are trying to understand such complex materials -
including looking at the analytic insights into one specific problem."
Schmalian gravitated to this type of research almost out of necessity.
Growing up in East Germany, he says he wanted to be an experimental scientist.
"But the technology wasn't good enough," he said. "In order
to be an exceptional experimentalist you need to work with your hands.
I didn't have the equipment available necessary to be a world-class experimental
physicist.
"Out of desperation I moved toward theoretical physics," he
continued. "There I could compete as a theoretical physicist."
And if his first few years in the field are any indication, Joerg Schmalian
has achieved that goal.
Around LAS
September 22 to October 5, 2003
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