Team

Pedram Khalili is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northwestern University, where he is also Co-Director of the Applied Physics Program and Director of the Physical Electronics Research Laboratory. 

Prof. Khalili has published more than 140 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals and is an inventor on 18 issued patents. He was named Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council in 2024, received the Northwestern University ECE Allen Taflove Best Teacher Award in 2020, was a Cisco Innovation Grand Challenge finalist in 2015, and IEEE International Magnetics Conference Best Student Paper finalist in 2008. He received the B.Sc. degree from Sharif University of Technology in 2004, and the Ph.D. degree (cum laude) from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherlands, in 2008, both in electrical engineering. Prior to joining Northwestern, he was a research associate and adjunct assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 2009 to 2017.

He is an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Physics, and serves on the Editorial Board of Physica E: Low-dimensional Systems and Nanostructures. He has served on the technical program committees and organizing committees of several conferences, including the Joint MMM/Intermag Conference, the IEEE Conference on Rebooting Computing (ICRC), the SPIE Spintronics Conference, and the Flash Memory Summit conference advisory board. He is past Chair of the Chicago Chapter of the IEEE Magnetics Society, and serves on the IEEE Task Force for Rebooting Computing (TFRC) Executive Committee. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Dr. Mohammad Hamdi obtained his B.S. degree in Physics from Urmia University in 2013 and his M.S. degree in Solid State Physics from Shahid Beheshti University in 2016, in Iran. He was a joint Junior Researcher at Nano Physics and Spintronics Group as well as Computational Physics & Modeling Group at Shahid Beheshti University until 2018. In 2023, he obtained his PhD degree in Material Science and Engineering from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.  His PhD at the Laboratory of Nanoscale Magnetic Materials and Magnonics (LMGN) was focused on terahertz antiferromagnetic magnonics. During his PhD, he investigated THz magnons and magnon-phonon coupling and magnetoelastic effects in antiferromaggnets by means of inelastic Brillouin light scattering, and theoretically investigated spin Hall nano-oscillators based on nano-constrictions. Since October 2023, Mohammad has joined PERL at Northwestern University as Postdoctoral Researcher. His current research interests are focused on magnetic materials for MRAM applications, ultra-fast and nonlinear magnetization dynamics, antiferromagnetic spintronics, and magnonics.

Dr. Jaimin Kang received his B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Korea University in 2018, followed by his M.S. and Ph.D. in the same field from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2020 and 2024, respectively. His Ph.D. research covered diverse topics, including spin-orbit torque (SOT) control of antiferromagnets, magnetic random access memory (MRAM) for security applications, and spin transport in chiral materials. In October 2024, he joined PERL at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral researcher. His current research interests focus on non-collinear antiferromagnets and altermagnets for spintronic device applications.

Sevde Nur Arpaci obtained her B.S. degree in Physics from Bogazici University in 2016. From 2014 to 2019, she worked in Bogazici University Nanomagnetism and Spin Applications Research Group (BUSPIN). She joined PERL in September 2019 where she is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics. Her research interests are nanotechnology, magnetic materials and spintronics.

Christian Duffee received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Dallas in 2021 and 2022 respectively. He joined PERL as a Ph.D student in September 2022 where he works on the intersection of spintronic devices and new computing schemes. 

Jordan Athas received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. He joined PERL in Fall 2022 as a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. His research interests include spintronic devices and unconventional computing paradigms.

Eric Matt earned his B.A. in Physics at Colgate University in 2022. He subsequently joined PERL as a Ph.D. student in the Applied Physics program in 2023. His research interests center around magnetic materials, spintronics, and unconventional computing.  

Shun-Kong Cheung completed his B.S. and MPhil degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2021 and 2024, respectively. His research at HKUST focused on spintronic devices and in-memory computing technologies. In Fall 2024, he joined PERL as a Ph.D. student, where he investigates the intersection of spin-orbit torque memory devices and in-memory computing.