Semonti Bhattacharyya

Bio:  Dr. Semonti Bhattacharyya joined the Leiden Institute of Physics in July 2022 as an Assistant Professor. In 2016, she completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore (India). After a short postdoc at IISc, she moved to Monash University, Melbourne (Australia) to work as a postdoc in 2017. In 2019, she was awarded a fellowship from the ARC centre of excellence for future low energy electronics technology (FLEET).

As an experimental physicist Semonti’s research interest focuses on quantum transport measurements in quantum materials such as graphene, van der Waals heterostructures, and topological insulators. Her research group at Leiden is investigating the fabrication techniques of novel van der Waals heterostructures, and electrical transport measurements in them as a function of twist angle and pressure.

Federica Galli got her PhD in Leiden in the group of John Mydosh on the topic of strongly correlated electron systems and charge density waves. Then she did a postdoc in Leiden in the group of Jan Aarts where she developed extensive expertise in cryogenic and ultra high vacuum scanning probe microscopy. Having developed several cryogenic scanning tunneling microscopes and atomic manipulation capabilities in the cryogenic STM in the group of Jan van Ruitenbeek, now she is facility manager of the LION AFM Facility"

Radhika Soni received her Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication engineering from Panjab University, Chandigarh (India) in 2016. In 2024, Radhika completed her PhD from Prof. Chandni U.’s group in the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics,  Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore (India). In her thesis, Radhika demonstrated planar tunnelling as a novel tool to probe twisted bilayer graphene systems. She is an expert on the fabrication of van der Waals heterostructures, as well as measurement techniques such as planar tunnelling and electrical transport measurements. In May 2024, she started her postdoc research on creating ultrathin magnetic memory with 2D materials.

Zhiyuan Cheng received his Bachelor's degree from Xi'an Jiaotong University (China) in 2020. He moved to Leiden in 2019 for his Bachelor's exchange year. From 2020, he continued his Master's studies in physics at Leiden University. During his Master's study, he joined Sense Jan van der Molen's group where he designed a low-energy electron emission gun for a transmission electron microscope (eV-TEM). Later, he did another Master's project with Kaveh Lahabi on the topic of building a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) on scanning probes. From March in 2023, he started his PhD research on magnetic proximity effect in van der Waals materials.