Biosketch
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero is an experimental physicist recognized for his work on the quantum electronic properties of 2-dimensional materials. He is known particularly for his studies of superconductivity, magnetism, and topological physics in 2D van der Waals heterostructures and moiré quantum matter. A native from Valencia, Spain, he received his “Licenciatura” in physics from the University of Valencia, in 1999. Then he got a M.Sc. at the University of California in San Diego, before going to the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2005. After a one-year postdoc in Delft, he moved to Columbia University, where he worked as a NanoResearch Initiative Fellow. He joined MIT as an assistant professor of physics in January 2008, received tenure in 2015, and he is currently Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics. Jarillo-Herrero is the recipient of numerous awards, including an NSF Career Award (2008), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2009), a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (2009), a DOE Early Career Award (2011), a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, 2012), an ONR Young Investigator Award (2013), the APS 2020 Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize, the 2020 Wolf Prize in Physics, the 2020 Medal of the Spanish Royal Physics Society, the 2021 Lise Meitner Distinguished Lecture and Medal, the 2021 US NAS Award for Scientific Discovery, and the 2022 Max Planck – Humboldt Research Award, among others.
Research Interests
Jarillo-Herrero's laboratory is interested in experimental condensed matter physics, in particular quantum electronic transport and optoelectronics in novel two-dimensional materials, with special emphasis on investigating their superconducting, magnetic, and topological properties. Over the past few years his group has pioneered research into 2D crystalline magnets and 2D topological insulators, as well as the emergent field of strongly correlated physics in moiré quantum matter. Of particular importance was his group's discovery in 2018 of correlated insulator states and superconductivity in magic angle twisted bilayer graphene, a discovery for which he received numerous awards. This emergent field, also known as twistronics, makes use of a new and unprecedented knob in materials science, namely the ability to change the relative angle between two 2D crystalline structures. Such changes in twist angle can lead to dramatic modifications of the materials' electronic structure, which have enabled the realization of most of the quantum phases of matter in this new moiré quantum matter platform.
Membership Type
International Member
Election Year
2022
Primary Section
Section 33: Applied Physical Sciences
Secondary Section
Section 13: Physics