Professor Judit Romhanyi wins Hellman Fellowship

Professor Judit Romhanyi, a physicist in the Department of Physics & Astronomy who specializes in quantum phenomena, recently won a UCI Hellman Fellowship. The award gives Romhanyi’s lab $50,000 to support a research proposal she wrote called “Z2, or not Z2? Topological protection in quantum magnets.”  A backwards play on the famous Hamlet soliloquy, the project deals with the number of holes that geometric objects have — work that has implications for the physical properties that materials can have, with special relevance to the development of superconductors. Romhanyi expects to use the funding to help her and her group travel to conferences to further their work.