IMX Colloquium - Switching the Quantum World

The ability to create sustainable, energy-efficient materials whose functionality can be dynamically controlled represents a central frontier of 21st-century quantum science and technology. Rather than relying on chemical substitution or static design, ultrafast light and current pulses provide reversible knobs that transiently reshape electronic interactions and reveal phases inaccessible at equilibrium. In this talk, I will show how non-equilibrium control of screening and short-range correlations enables the emergence of metastable metallic states and light-driven topological excitonic quasiparticles in two-dimensional quantum materials. These results demonstrate how microscopic interactions can be steered in real time to induce collective behavior, establishing a pathway toward dynamically programmable quantum matter.

Bio: Alessandra Lanzara is a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has been on the faculty since 2002, and the Director of Berkeley Discovery, a UC Berkeley wide initiative aimed at reimagining education and research in the age of artificial intelligence.
Her research focuses on superconductivity and quantum materials exploring electronic and topological phase transitions and emergent states of matter in and out of equilibrium. Her group also apply ultrafast tools to biological systems to study protein dynamics and cellular heterogeneity. 
She is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the Italian Physical Society, and a recipient of numerous honors, including the Fibonacci Prize and the Bakar Prize.