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"Discovery consists of seeing what everyone has seen, and thinking what no one has thought"- Albert  Szent-Gyorgi (1932 Nobel Laureate) 

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Dr. Aquil Ahmad is an experimental and theoretical quantum physicist. His current research interests include, but are not limited to, molecular engineering on superconducting surfaces, Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) states, scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS), and density functional theory (DFT) modeling to support experimental results. Previously, Dr. Ahmad has worked on a range of topics in thermoelectricity, nanomagnetism, and spintronics. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from India’s premier research institute, the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT-KGP), in 2021. At IIT-KGP, he developed highly spin-polarized half-metallic nanomaterials and thin films for spintronic applications such as magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ) and non-volatile magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM). Dr. Ahmad employed a wide range of experimental techniques to study the structural, magnetic, transport, and caloric properties of these materials. His specialization in nanomaterial synthesis and characterization, thin-film fabrication, and DFT computations has enabled him to make significant contributions to the field of spintronics.

After completing his Ph.D., he joined SASTRA Deemed University as an Assistant Professor Research, where he was awarded the prestigious and highly competitive National Postdoctoral Fellowship (NPDF) from the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India. This fellowship was intended for research on Weyl semimetals for topo-spintronics in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune. At the same time, he was also offered a postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan. Dr. Ahmad declined the NPDF offer in favor of the MOST fellowship, choosing to work on thermoelectric materials in the group of the distinguished Prof. Chia-J. Liu in the Department of Physics at the National Changhua University of Education (NCUE), Taiwan. After successfully completing this project, he was awarded a second postdoctoral fellowship in 2023 by the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan to continue his research at the same institute with Prof. Jyh-Pin Chou’s group.

In 2024, Dr. Ahmad joined one of the highest-ranked and globally recognized institutions in Hong Kong—The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)—to work on spin-orbit torque manipulation and its applications in spin logic devices and chips under the supervision of Prof. Qiming Shao. Shortly thereafter, he was awarded the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) cofund fellowship by the European Commission’s (EU) Horizon Europe programme. As part of this fellowship, he is currently working with Dr. Alexander Weismann and Prof. Richard Berndt’s group at the Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Kiel Nano, Surface and Interface Science (KINSIS), Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany. He is leading a project titled “Unlocking Quantum Potential: Investigations of Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) States in Molecular Systems on Superconductors.” This project involves hands-on experience with versatile UHV systems such as scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS), focusing on the quantum properties and manipulation of molecular systems on surfaces, complemented by DFT-based modeling.

Dr. Ahmad has also served as an Organizing Committee Member for the "IEEE Around-the-Clock Around-the-Globe Magnetics Conference 2023" organized by the IEEE Magnetics Society. He was Guest Editor for a special issue titled “New Insights in Nanomanufacturing Polymer-Based Materials: From Synthesis to Applications” in the journal Nanomanufacturing, and Assistant Guest Editor for the special issue “Nanostructured Thermoelectric Materials” in the journal Nanomaterials.

He is the recipient of several awards and highly competitive research grants and maintains active collaborations with internationally recognized research groups.