FSU recruits leading physicist to help shape future of MagLab

Internationally renowned physicist and National Academy of Sciences member Laura H. Greene is the new chief scientist for the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab), concluding a decade-long search for a position critical to the advancement of magnetic field research.

Laura H. Greene, chief scientist for the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

“We are delighted to welcome Laura to the MagLab,” said Greg Boebinger, director of the MagLab. “This is a very exciting hire of a highly regarded condensed matter experimentalist who will bring new perspectives and new visibility to the scientific achievements of the MagLab and its user program.”

Greene brings more than 20 years of scientific expertise and teaching experience to the world’s largest and highest-powered magnet lab. Her physics research is centered on studies of strongly correlated electron systems and she is known internationally for her discoveries, including those involving Andreev bound states in unconventional superconductors.

“Florida State University is committed to recruiting the highest caliber of research faculty members," said Vice President for Research Gary K. Ostrander. “Laura is the university’s most recent example — a National Academy member with a prestigious career that includes several of the world’s most respected scientific institutions.”

Greene’s more than 400 invited talks and nearly 200 publications have earned her fellowships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society. She is the winner of the E.O. Lawrence Award for Materials Research from the Department of Energy. 

She is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Members are elected to the academy in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive.

Greene previously served as a Swanlund and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also the associate director for the Center for Emergent Superconductivity, a consortium of researchers from Brookhaven National Lab, Argonne National Lab and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who advance the understanding and control of materials, mechanisms and critical currents of superconductors.

Greene received her undergraduate degree at Ohio State University and completed her master’s and doctoral degrees at Cornell. She started her professional career at Bell Labs and contributed to a number of discoveries that were key to an early understanding of the intrinsic properties of high-temperature superconductivity.

As the chief scientist, Greene will partner with MagLab leadership on the development and articulation of the lab’s scientific vision to advance all seven user facilities located at Florida State, the University of Florida and Los Alamos National Laboratory. She will also oversee the lab’s interdisciplinary Science Council, an internal advisory group that explores emerging scientific opportunities for the lab.   

“I have so much respect for the quality of research taking place at the MagLab across scientific disciplines,” Greene said. “The organization is known around the world as the premier location for high-magnetic-field research and for a remarkable commitment to educating the community about how high magnetic field research is relevant to their lives.”

In addition to her role as chief scientist, Greene also will hold a faculty position in the FSU Department of Physics, where her work in materials science will contribute to a burgeoning research infrastructure based around the broadly defined areas of energy and materials.