The School of Science recently announced that four of its faculty members have been granted tenure by MIT.
This year’s newly tenured professors are:
Laurent Demanet, in the Department of Mathematics. Demanet studies inverse problems related to wave scattering and high-frequency data, which are often motivated by real-life challenges in seismic and radar imaging. Research directions include computational wave propagation, fast numerical algorithms, applied harmonic analysis, nonlinear signal processing, convex optimization, and the mathematics of sparse and separated expansions.
Demanet completed his undergraduate studies in mathematical engineering and theoretical physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. After he completed his PhD in 2006 at Caltech under the direction of Emmanuel Candes, he was appointed the Szegö Assistant Professor at Stanford University. He joined the MIT faculty in the Department of Mathematics in 2009. In 2011, he received an Alred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Air Force Young Investigator Award. In 2012, he received a 2012 NSF CAREER Award.
Nuh Gedik, the Lawrence C. (1944) and Sarah W. Biedenharn Career Development Associate Professor of Physics. Gedik uses advanced optical techniques for investigating and manipulating the properties of quantum materials, such as topological insulators and high-temperature superconductors. Using ultrafast laser pulses, he studies processes in solids that take place within femtoseconds (billionth of a millionth of a second) and at lengths of angstroms (tenth of a billionth of a meter). Gedik employs these techniques to search for answers to important problems in condensed matter physics, with a primary focus on understanding the mechanisms behind the unique properties of strongly correlated electron systems.
Gedik received his BS in physics in 1998 from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, and his PhD in physics in 2004 from the University of California at Berkeley. Following a postdoc appointment at Caltech, he joined the joined the faculty of MIT's Department of Physics in 2008. Gedik has received several awards and honors, including the Moore Experimental Investigator Award in Quantum Materials (2014), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2012), and an NSF CAREER Award (2009).
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor of Physics. Jarillo-Herrero explores quantum transport in novel condensed-matter systems such as graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, and topological insulators. In recent work, he has demonstrated the presence of a bandgap in graphene-based van der Waals heterostructures, novel quantum spin Hall and photothermoelectric effects in graphene, as well as light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, and solar cells in the atomically thin tungsten diselenide system. He has also made advances in characterizing and manipulating the properties of other ultrathin materials, such as ultra-thin graphite and molybdenum disulphide, which lack graphene’s ultrarelativistic properties, but possess other unusual electronic properties.
After earning an MS at the University of Valencia, Spain, in 1999 and another at the University of California at San Diego in 2001, Jarillo-Herrero earned his PhD at the Delft University of Technology in 2005. He remained at Delft for a year as a postdoc and then worked as a NanoResearch Initiative Fellow at Columbia University until he joined the MIT faculty in 2008. Jarillo-Hererro’s awards include an NSF Career Award (2008), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2009), the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Semiconductor Physics (2010), a DOE Early Career Award (2011), a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, 2012), an ONR Young Investigator Award (2013), and a Moore Foundation Investigator Award (2014).
Shuhei Ono, in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). Ono is a geochemist who uses precise measurements of stable isotopes to address questions related to Earth’s early history, such as when oxygen first appeared in Earth’s atmosphere, the temperature of Earth’s early climate, and how far the biosphere extends into the Earth’s crust. Using state-of-the-art technology to unlock the isotopic signals for microbial, hydrothermal, and photochemical processes, his research group studies minerals formed billions of years ago or deep in the oceanic crust, as well as trace gasses from the atmosphere, cow rumens, and from the deep subsurface.
Ono earned his BS (1994) and ME (1996) at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and PhD from Pennsylvania State University in 2001. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Ono joined EAPS as a faculty member in 2007. He was awarded the Jubilee Medal by the Geological Society of South Africa in 2006.
