Justin Song

Justin Song is theoretical condensed matter physicist interested in emergent phenomena in quantum systems, broadly defined. Recently discovered quantum materials (e.g., Weyl and Dirac semimetals, 2D Dirac materials, van der Waals heterostructures, topological insulators) provide a ripe venue for this exploration. In many of these systems, the unique "winding" of the Bloch wavefunctions, electron interactions, intimate coupling between several layers in vertical as well as lateral heterostructures, and indeed the interplay of all three can yield qualitatively new phenomena.  In some cases, new physics arising out of these materials has motivated new ideas in manipulating internal degrees of freedom such as energy, charge, valley, and spin. Another avenue that Justin is exploring is how quantum dynamics and out-of-equilibrium systems be used to achieve new behavior beyond the limitations of equilibrium thermodynamics. 

Justin is Provost's chair in physics and associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore. He was also a National Research Foundation Fellow (Class of 2016). 

Previously, Justin was Burke Fellow and Sherman Fairchild Scholar in Theoretical Physics at the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech. Before Caltech, he worked with Leonid Levitov at MIT, on novel transport and opto-electronic phenomena in graphene. One theme amongst many was unveiling the unusually large role that "hot carriers" play in a variety of graphene's responses that range from fundamental things such as photo-response, to more exotic physics as Coulomb drag between two graphene layers. He received my PhD from Harvard in 2014, and AM from Harvard in 2011, and his BSc at Imperial College London.

He is particularly attracted to theory that is intimately/directly connected with experiments. He continue to have a variety of fruitful interactions with experimental groups including Jarillo-Herrero group (MIT), Koppens group (ICFO), Geim group (Manchester), Kats group (Wisconsin), and Gabor group (UC Riverside). 

For more details see research and physics, and publications.