Group Snapshots

The UT-Rutgers DMREF team always goes to our favorite Greek restaurant!
Jan and friends at the DMREF PI Meeting in DC in 2015 in front of our awesome poster!
Jan and friends at the 2013 Telluride workshop on spin-orbit coupling in 4 and 5d materials.
Jan and friends at the 2015 Telluride workshop on spin-orbit coupling in 4- and 5d-containing materials.
Jan and friends at the conference picnic in Telluride after a wonderful day of science + hiking!
Jan with many old friends in front of the hybrid magnet at the Chinese High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Heifei.
Kati Kamaras from the Wigner Institute in Budapest joined us for the solar eclipse. We had 33 seconds of totality!
Jan with Erik Henriksen from Washington University and Dave Mandrus from UT/ORNL eating lunch by the ocean at the "Inorganic analogues to graphene" workshop in Cancun. Ben Hunt from Carnegie Melon took the photo!
Larry Carr and Jan hanging out at beamline 5.4 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Kevin and Mike Martin working at beamline 2.4 at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
Micky Holcomb (WVU), Randy Fishman (ORNL), and Jan walking around Portland after the Gordon Research Conference!
Kati Kamaras and Jan in the beautiful snow at the Boston March Meeting!
Avery likes this version of the 2019 group picture! I wonder why... It must be because the girls look so happy!
Magneto-optics reunion in Washington DC with Giti Khodaparast (Virginia Tech), Madalina Furris (Vermont), Steve McGill (Magnet Lab), and David Bernholdt (ORNL)!
Fall 2020 photo of the research team. What a beautiful fall day!
Avery and Kiman dress up as the X-Men (or the Blues Brothers?) for the departmental Halloween contest! p.s. They won first prize!
We have a new espresso maker! It's very popular. :-)
We have the cups too... so we look good drinking our espresso.
Avery gave a talk at the MAGNA meeting and won the 3rd place presentation prize!
The DMREF PIs (Kristjan, David, Weida, Valery, Sang, and Jan) meet regularly on Zoom.
Amanda popping the cork on the champagne after her defense.
Three new PhD's in one day! A world record?
We took photos outside before the graduation ceremony in the stadium.
Avery shows Jun Hee Lee and his team (Ulsan) how we interface the cryostat to our infrared microscope. They spent a sabbatical year in Knoxville.
Out for lunch at Chiao's with Heung-Sik Kim from Kangwon. He survived hot chile level 35!
Visiting El Paso for the United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science! Thanks to Mark and Zahara for organizing it!
A quick break between sessions at the Starbucks with Steve Hill, Jim Fry, and Hai Ping Cheng at the San Diego ACS meeting.
Kiman gave a poster on nonreciprocity in the telecom wavelength range at the Quantum Materials summer school in Santa Barbara!
7 year old Violet El Gammel and Avery make bubbles with dry ice, measure the modulus of a banana under liquid nitrogen, and make ice cream.
Violet even has a look at a penny using our new stereo microscope.
Vivien Zapf visits the lab to discuss high field polarization with Avery!
Han Bechtel visits the lab to work with the near field team!
Luther is monitoring the world cup while reading Kevin's thesis.
Kevin teaches Brian and Sambridhi how to exfolidate sheets from 2D chalcogenides and view the results using our new stereo microscope.
Kevin uncorks a bottle of champagne after his defense!
Ashley is the very first user on the near field infrared beam line at Brookhaven!
Luther loves measuring synchrotron-based far infrared at the high pressure beam line at Brookhaven!
Avery enjoys teaching Raman scattering spectroscopy to the advanced physical chemistry lab students.
Yanhong and Kevin also had fun with the p-chem students and the "Raman scattering for gemstone identification" lab.
Jan acquired a complete optical bench for the Bruker 113v from David Tanner's lab in Gainesville. She picked up a lot of spare electronics boards as well!
Dylan (along with his mentor Luther) presents a poster at the UT undergraduate research symposium on thermal analysis of quantum materials.
Brian visits the Weizmann Institute. Here, he is posing with Reshef Tenne and Yao Guo by the Salvador Dali scuplture in the lobby!
Brian got a great tour of Alla Zak's lab at the Holon Instutute + a chance to see how chalcogenide nanotubes are made!
Brian also went on a guided tour of Jerusalem before the NTAI workshop at the Holon Institute.
Ashley gave a poster at the near field infrared summer school in San Sebastian, Spain!
Ashley at a traditional Basque cider house in San Sebastian, Spain.
Avery polishes crystals in preparation for pulsed field polarization measurements at Los Alamos!
Yanhong and Kevin set up for Kerr rotation measurements on the 25 T split helix at the Magnet Lab!
This afternoon, we went to the Oppenheimer movie and ate Korean food. A good time was had by all!
Our new micro-electronic drilling system finally arrived! Now we can drill gaskets!
Dylan wins third place at the Advanced Light Source Poster Slam!
Dylan spent the summer at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory!
Yanhong helps herself to the summer berry pie.
Summer berry pie is amazing!
Brian is measuring the low temperature Raman scattering response of chalcogenide nanotubes of different sizes.
Ladies and gentlemen... Behold! The new sample mounting tables (hereafter called "the Big T") are here!
Ashley is checking out the tip-enhanced Raman setup at Horiba Instruments!
Ashley and Sean are polishing c-oriented Ni3TeO6 at Rutgers to better reveal domain wall topology.
Luther is loading an annealed ruby ball into a diamond anvil cell for high pressure measurements.
Yanhong has spectroscopy under strain working in our infrared microscope!
Sambridhi joins the infrared beamline guys for dinner at Lombardi's!
Sambridhi measures high pressure infrared at the BNL synchrotron!
Everyone had lunch with Laura Greene during her visit where she shared stories of meeting the President!
Sambridhi and Yanhong check out the reindeer antlers before picking out sandwiches and cookies for the hike!
Everyone is ready for the Alum Gap hike in the Smokey Mountains!
Sang Cheong (Rutgers) and Junjie Yang (NJIT) join us on the Alum Gap hike in the Smokiey Mountains.
Sang Cheong (Rutgers), Junjie Yang (NJIT), and Jan plot a path to Glory on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
Sambridhi gave a poster at the University of Maryland Quantum Materials Winter School!
Luther plays in the snow on the Maryland campus with Stan Tozer (NHMFL) and Bianca Haberl (ORNL).
Luther presents a poster on his work at the High Pressure Quantum Materials Winter School at University of Maryland as well.
Karin Rabe (Rutgers) visits for the United Nations day of celebration for women and girls in science! Kevin, Ashley, Daniel, and Ben join in the discussions!
We took Karin downtown to Remedy Coffee where she had coffee and the traditional Rutgers Salmon Bagel!
Kevin, Avery, and Luther gave talks on their work during Johnny Pelliciari's (BNL) visit!
Jun Hee Lee (Ulsan) and his student came by to discuss polarization switching in hafnia. Kevin, Sam, Ashley, and Avery joined in!
Brian and Sambridhi drill gasket holes at the National Synchrotron Light Source II.
Kevin at one of the road side overlooks on the way up to Los Alamos.
Kevin enjoys a snowstorm in Los Alamos with Oppie and General Groves.
Everyone surprised Jan on her birthday, so we ate cake and took a photo outside!
Another great poster on the properties of quantum materials by Dylan!
We stopped at the Buc ee's on the way to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base so that Luther could check out the selection of beef jerkey!
The new transfer line for the 4 - 500 K low profile cryostat is here, thank goodness!
Please welcome Dr. Avery Blockmon! His defense probably set a new world record with 50 in-person attendees and 41 via Zoom!
Thank you to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory for making Avery's work on the high field properties of molecule-based quantum materials possible!
Sean Xu visited the lab before heading up to his new job in Minnesotta.
Ella, our summer lab technician, cleans and sorts our sample holders using the stereo microscope.
Brian, Sambridhi, and Luther attend the high pressure Gordon Research Conference at the Holderness School.
Sambridhi and Brian enjoy kayaking with Luther (not shown) during the free time at the GRC.
Luther and Brian tuck into the traditional Thursday evening lobsters at the high pressure GRC.
Ella with the team on the last day of her summer internship. Sophmore year in high school is not nearly as exciting as work in the lab!
We are ready to go tubing down the river in Townsend! Sunscreen? Check. Water? Check. Hats? Check.
Tubing in the Smokey Mountains is a blast! The sun was bright, the water was cool... and Luther can do a double flipping twist jump off the rocks!
ISCOM 2024 was held in Anchorage, AK this year with great hiking for all! Avery and Ben joined in the fun!
Kevin, Yanhong, and Daniel with Steve McGill at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee!
Kevin, Daniel, and Yanhong have a look inside the bore of the 45 T hybrid magnet in Tallahassee.
Ben and Yanhong show the photoconductivity setup to Yuan Li and his team from Peking University.
Another big day in the Musfeldt group. Please welcome new PhD Luther Langston!