Introducing--Our Newest Faculty Members William Soffa and Stuart Wolf

William A. Soffa
Professor of MSE focused on magnetic materials

My research interests are in the areas of phase transformations, magnetic materials and crystal plasticity. I have been particularly interested in using electron microscopy to study clustering and ordering in solid solutions and in the synergistics of these processes in precipitation phenomena. In addition, I have been studying the mechanisms of coercivity in permanent magnet materials and the relationship between microstructure and properties in hard ferromagnets. Most recently, my attention has been directed to ferromagnetic L10 intermetallic phases including nanophase hard magnets and thin films.

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Stuart Wolf
Professor of MSE and Physics focused on magnetic materials

I spent 31 years at the Naval Research Laboratory both as a scientist and scientific manager. My research was primarily in superconductivity and magnetism. For the last 12 years, I was first part time and then a full time Program Manager at DARPA supervising projects such as Spintronics, Frequency Agile Materials for Electronics (FAME), Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST), Advanced Thermoelectrics,Advanced Magnets for Power Systems (AMPS) and finally Superconducting Hybrid Power Electronics (SuperHyPE).

My primary interest at UVa is in the study of spin dependent phenomenon in thin films and alternating multilayers of magnetic and non-magnetic metals, semiconductors and insulators. These structures exhibit large changes in resistance depending on the relative orientation of the magnetic layers. These structures can be utilized as non-volatile memory,reconfigurable logic and very sensitive magnetic sensors. I am also interested in the use of the spin degree of freedom as a quantum bit (or qubit) for quantum information processing. Single electron spins can be contained in either self organized or electrically confined quantum dot structures and manipulated electronically to produce quantum gates. Finally, I have a long standing interest in novel superconducting materials including a host of copper oxide and ruthenium oxide based materials.

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