In his talk, Professor Boebinger will detail the research applications of magnetic fields, which are one of the few thermodynamic variables that can be applied in situ, rapidly, reversibly and with infinite tunability. His presentation will include examples from the portfolio of user research, including the use of magnetic fields in tweaking macroscopic quantum phenomena in graphene and high-temperature superconductors and the ways quantum dots and sodium have been used to revolutionize magnetic resonance imaging.

The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory – better known as MagLab – is considered the world’s leading magnet laboratory, generating magnetic fields exceeding 100 tesla or 2 million times the Earth’s magnetic field. Headquartered near Florida State University, MagLab serves an international user community and is dedicated to developing and operating high magnetic field facilities and providing expertise spanning condensed matter physics, materials science, chemistry, biochemistry and biology.

Professor Boebinger, who serves as a professor of physics at Florida State University, earned bachelor’s degrees in physics, electrical engineering and philosophy from Purdue University in 1981. With a Churchill Scholarship, he traveled to the University of Cambridge for a year of research under Professor Sir Richard Friend, studying one-dimensional organic superconductors.

He received his Ph.D. in physics in May 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he held Compton and Hertz Foundation fellowships. He did his thesis research, which used high magnetic fields and ultra-low temperatures to study the fractional quantum Hall effect, with Nobel Laureates Horst Stormer and Dan Tsui.

In 1987, he joined Bell Laboratories, where he studied correlated electron systems, including high temperature superconductors, using pulsed magnetic fields. He moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1998 to head MagLab’s pulsed field facility. He became director of MagLab in 2004. Professor Boebinger is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

I hope you will join me for this important colloquium.