Carnegie Mellon University
May 01, 2019

Physicist Benjamin Hunt Named 2019 Cottrell Scholar

By Jocelyn Duffy

Jocelyn Duffy
  • Mellon College of Science
  • 412-268-9982

Carnegie Mellon Assistant Professor of Physics Benjamin Hunt has been named a 2019 Cottrell Scholar. Twenty-four of the nation's top early career scientists received the designation from the Research Corporation for the Science Advancement (RCSA). The awards recognize the recipients' leadership in integrating science teaching and research at U.S. research universities and undergraduate institutions. 

"The Cottrell Scholar program champions the very best early career teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics and astronomy by providing these significant discretionary awards," said RCSA President and CEO Daniel Linzer.

Hunt will use the support from the scholar program to further his research in the role of crystal symmetry in superconductivity. Specifically, he will extend his work to a new class of two-dimensional materials that are superconductors and attempt to provide evidence for the broken symmetries that give the materials their peculiar superconducting properties. Understanding these broken symmetries and their connection to the properties of the materials is essential to developing 2D superconductors for various applications, including those in quantum computing.

Hunt will also create a comprehensive undergraduate condensed matter lab, which will give students the opportunity to investigate 2D materials through nanofabrication of devices and to create their own experiments to determine the properties of new configurations of the materials.

Hunt joined Carnegie Mellon's physics faculty in 2015 following postdoctoral work at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University. His research is supported by the Department of Energy’s Young Investigator program and grants from the National Science Foundation.