Staff Scientist

Links:

<aside> 💡 **Bio

Theory of Nanostructured Materials

Dr. Sinéad M. Griffin is a Staff Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division and Molecular Foundry at Berkeley Lab where she leads the Quantum Materials Theory group. Dr. Griffin received her PhD from ETH Zürich in 2014. From 2015-18 she was an SNF postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, becoming staff scientist in 2019. Dr. Griffin's awards include the Swiss Physical Society Award for General Physics, the Berkeley Lab Director's Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the IUPAP Early Career Scientist Prize in Computational Physics. She is also actively involved in promoting science in Africa, and since 2010 has lectured throughout the continent as part of the African School on Electronic Structure: Theory and Applications (ASESMA).

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Spotify Interview with The Theory Girls

https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/0DbQVzocazC1HX4uHoC9vD?utm_source=generator&theme=0&t=55648


UCSC Talk

Date: Thursday, October 12, 2023

Time: 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Location: Natural Science 101

Address: Next to ISB in front of Science and Engineering Library

Post-Colloquium Snacks! in ISB Courtyard at 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM

https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d3186.4764471330695!2d-122.06376512415257!3d36.99842847219122!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x808e419fff1fc8f9%3A0xf2cc351a08609982!2sNatural Science 2 Annex!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1696917412975!5m2!1sen!2sus

Title: Two Short Stories: Searching for dark matter and room-temperature superconductivity

<aside> 💡 Abstract The last few decades have seen a huge surge of interest in matter that cannot be described by our standard theories. For instance, the nature of dark matter, which cannot be described by the Standard Model, remains one of the biggest mysteries in our current understanding of the universe. As ongoing experiments continue to rule out large regions of phase space for higher-mass dark matter (e.g. WIMPs), new ideas for the direct detection of low mass (sub-GeV) are needed. In this talk I will discuss how quasiparticle phenomena in quantum materials are apt for the direct detection of low mass dark matter. I will describe our strategy of designing bespoke Hamiltonians in solid-state systems to maximally couple to well-motivated dark matter models, and how these can be realized in both existing and hypothetical materials. In this second part of my talk, I will give an overview of exotic superconductors which do not have conventional electron-phonon pairing, and a perspective on purported room-temperature superconductivity in Cu-substituted lead apatite, also known as ‘lk99’.

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Interests