Brown Assistant Professor Lucas Caretta has been awarded the 2024 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Early Career Scientist Prize in the field of Magnetism. He was honored “For outstanding contributions to the understanding of ultrafast, current-driven magnetic domain wall motion and relativistic magnetization dynamics.”
Established in 2016, the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize (recently renamed Early Career Scientist Prize) in the field of Magnetism is awarded every year to a scientist for theoretical or experimental work in fundamental or applied magnetism. To qualify, the candidate must have completed her/his doctorate degree within the last eight years. The award consists of a certificate, a medal, and a monetary award. An award talk will be held at the International Conference on Magnetism in Italy in July.
In the fall of 2023, Caretta was one of three researchers under 40 awarded an iWOE Prize in Oxide Electronics for Excellence in Research at the 29th International Workshop on Oxide Electronics held in South Korea.
The objective of his research is to design and manipulate magnetic, electronic, and optical properties of oxide thin films on demand, combining epitaxial, atomic-scale thin film synthesis and state-of-the-art in-situ materials characterization. Caretta is driven by solving fundamental nanoscale problems to tackle technological large-scale challenges.
Caretta came to Brown in the fall of 2022, after completing his postdoctoral studies in the Ramesh Lab at the University of California, Berkeley where he was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. He received his B.S. from the University of Minnesota and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellow and GEM Consortium Fellow.