• Director Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter
• Professor of Physics (part time): University of Oxford

Bio

Andrea Cavalleri is the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg (Germany) and a professor of Physics at the University of Oxford (UK). After receiving a laurea degree from the University of Pavia (Italy), he held graduate, postgraduate, and research staff positions at the University of Essen (Germany), at the University of California, San Diego (US), and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US). He joined the Oxford faculty in 2005.

He is best known for his experimental studies of the photo-induced phase transition in materials with strongly correlated electrons, such as transition metal oxides and organic conductors.

In recent years, his research group has developed techniques that make use of strong TeraHertz pulses to manipulate directly lattice distortions and other collective modes of solids. Through precise optical control, he has shown that ordered states like superconductivity or ferroelectricity can be induced by light at temperatures far above the thermodynamic transition temperature.

Motivated by the need to probe driven materials, he has also been a major driver in the development of ultrafast X-ray techniques since their inception in the late 1990s through their modern incarnation at X-ray Free Electron Lasers.

Cavalleri is a recipient of the 2004 European Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, of the 2015 Max Born Medal from the IoP and the DFG, of the 2015 Dannie Heineman Prize from the Academy of Sciences in Goettingen and of the 2018 Isakson Prize from the American Physical Society. He is a fellow of the APS, of the AAAS, and of the IoP. In 2017, he was elected Member of the Academia Europaea.

Prizes, Awards and other Distinctions

EPS Europhysics Prize – European Physical Society	2024
Frank Isakson Prize – American Physical Society	2018
Elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences	2018
Elected Member of the Academia Europaea	2017
Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science	2016
Max Born Medal and Prize – UK Institute of Physics & German Physical Society	2015
Dannie Heinemann Prize of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Göttingen	2015
Elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics – UK	2015
ERC Synergy Grant Award (with A. Georges, J.M. Triscone, D. Jaksch)	2013
Medaglia Teresiana – Universita’ di Pavia, Italy	2012
2012 Ångström Lecturer – Uppsala University	2012
Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society	2011
European Young Investigator Award – European Science Foundation	2004
David Shirley Award for outstanding scientific achievement – Advanced Light Source – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory	2004