Ramamoorthy Ramesh

Biosketch

Ramamoorthy Ramesh received a B.S. in Chemistry from Madras University (1980), a B.Engg. in Metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1985 and 1987, respectively. From 1989-1995 Ramesh was a Member of Technical Staff, Bell Communications Research (Red Bank). From 1995-2003, he was Associate Professor/professor, University of Maryland. Since 2004, he has been a Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Ramesh has had a number of leadership positions including serving as the Founding Director, U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative, the Deputy Director, Science and Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Associate Laboratory Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Most recently, he served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team for Energy. He is a co-founder of Kepler Computing, a venture-funded company which is focused on low power computing based on his work on ferroelectrics.

Research Interests

Ramesh pursues key materials physics and technological problems in complex multifunctional oxides and related materials. He uses epitaxial synthesis as a pathway to create model systems to probe fundamental phenomena using a combination of electron, xray and scanned probe techniques. Using conducting oxides, he solved the 30-year enigma of polarization fatigue in ferroelectrics, leading to a commercial technology. He pioneered research into correlated oxides such as the manganites, coining the term Colossal Magnetoresistive (CMR) Oxides. His seminal work on multiferroics demonstrated electric field control of ferromagnetism, a critical step towards ultralow power memory and logic elements.
His extensive publications (>650) on the synthesis and materials physics of complex oxides are highly cited (over 100,000 citations, H-factor over 150). He is a fellow of APS, AAAS & MRS and an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, a Foreign member of the Royal Society of London, the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences. His awards include the Humboldt Senior Scientist Prize, the MRS Turnbull lectureship prize, the APS Adler Lectureship and McGroddy New Materials Prize, the TMS Bardeen Prize, the 2018 IUPAP Magnetism Prize and Neel Medal and the Europhysics Prize in 2022. He was recognized as a Thomson-Reuters Citation Laureate in Physics for his work on multiferroics.