Carnegie Mellon University
June 03, 2020

Ryan Muzzio Wins Award at Remote Poster Session

By Theresa Gabrielli

Physics Ph.D. candidate Ryan Muzzio has won a PQI2020 Poster Award for his poster, “Momentum-resolved view of highly tunable many-body effects in a graphene/hBN field-effect device.” This is the second year in a row that Muzzio has won a Pittsburgh Quantum Institute (PQI) poster session award, but this year’s event had an added level of difficulty: due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the session was held remotely over a Zoom call and streamed live over YouTube.

When I present a poster, I like to gauge the audience’s understanding through body language,” Muzzio said. “Here that was impossible.”

“The virtual session was a great opportunity for the students to practice preparing presentations for remote viewing and communicating professionally online with their PQI peers,” said Assistant Professor Jyoti Katoch, Muzzio’s advisor. “Undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students were all encouraged to participate.”

“I will always prefer to do things in person,” Muzzio said. However, he felt the lack of a physically-present audience may have aided in his presentation.

“Ultimately when you are being judged you cannot take the time to gauge the understanding – the presentation should not be misunderstood in the first place. So in that sense, being home and comfortable made it slightly easier,” he said.

Muzzio’s research is in condensed matter physics. As a member of the LIQUID Group at CMU, he investigates the behavior of electrons in material systems as thin as a single atom thick. That behavior changes across different materials, or when a system is comprised of multiple ultra-thin materials stacked like Legos on top of each other. Research of this nature has real-world implications for the advancement of all modern electronics. 

Muzzio is passionate about his work and appreciates opportunities like poster sessions where he can share it with others in the field. “I am always simultaneously excited and intimidated by potential questions, but I enjoy discussing my research because it brings up points I had not considered,” he said. “PQI did an amazing job with their poster presentation and I thank them for providing the space for the event!”

Outside of poster presentations, Muzzio’s research is moving forward at a steady pace. He is the first author of a paper that has just been accepted as Rapid Communication to Physical Review B, and a contributing author on a second paper that has been accepted to Advanced Materials. “I would like to thank PQI for the event and award, my advisor Dr. Jyoti Katoch as well as Dr. Simranjeet Singh for the guidance through the project, and my peers and coworkers who supported me,” he said.