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The European Physical Society awarded Aalto University Assistant Professor Jose Lado with the . The prize is awarded to researchers that have made a substantial contribution to the development or reputation of physics in Europe within the first 12 years of their career.

Lado established influential contributions in the field of van der Waals quantum materials, including twisted van der Waals heterostructures, magnetic and multiferroic two-dimensional materials, and heavy-fermion van der Waals materials.

“Van der Waals quantum materials provide an outstanding platform to create new forms of exotic quantum matter that do not occur in natural materials,” Lado said.

Van der Waals materials are a class of materials that are stable up to the monolayer limit due to the weak van der Waals forces that bond different layers. These weak van der Waals forces allow creating artificial heterostructures between radically different materials, which allows the realisation of emergent quantum phenomena. This combination is the driving force to unleash new forms of exotic quantum matter by bringing together quantum phenomena that do not already coexist in natural compounds.

Quantum materials display quantum properties at macroscopic scales, providing the platform to bring exotic quantum phenomena to the macroscopic world. Quantum materials realise the fundamental building blocks for different forms of quantum technologies. Ultimately, engineering new exotic quantum materials enables the creation of new forms of quantum technologies.

“The engineering of artificial quantum materials represents one of the most disruptive directions in physics,” Lado said. “Quantum materials realise an interdisciplinary field bringing together physics, chemistry, material science, and computer science. Creating new quantum materials will allow us to reveal radically new fundamental science and to develop new, groundbreaking quantum technologies.”

Lado leads the Correlated Quantum Materials (CQM) group at the Department of Applied Physics at Aalto, which focuses on engineering quantum materials featuring radically new quantum phenomena. To engineer these materials, the group brings together tools from computational physics, theoretical physics, quantum materials methodologies, machine learning, and, in the near future, quantum algorithms. The CQM group works in collaboration with experimental groups studying quantum materials in general and van der Waals materials in particular.