Shantanu Mishra           

I am a postdoctoral researcher working in the Atom and Molecule Manipulation Laboratory led by Leo Gross. My research activities at IBM broadly center around (1) on-surface chemistry for bottom-up fabrication of polyaromatic hydrocarbons and carbon-based supramolecular nanostructures, and (2) atomic-scale structural and electronic characterization of these materials using scanning tunneling microscopy, atomic force microscopy and Kelvin probe force microscopy. I am particularly interested in low-dimensional magnetism and strongly-correlated phenomena in organic materials.

I received my PhD in Physics from the University of Zurich, Switzerland in April 2020. I performed my doctoral research at the nanotech@surfaces Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), where my advisors were Roman Fasel and Pascal Ruffieux. The focus of my doctoral research was on the investigation of pure carbon-based magnetism in polyaromatic hydrocarbons, organic polymers and graphene nanoribbons using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. Additionally, I also studied atomistic mechanisms of chemical reactions on surfaces using synchrotron X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Between July 2020 to January 2021, I was a postdoctoral researcher at EMPA, where I investigated the emergence of exotic magnetic states in molecular quantum spin chains and lattices.

I hold Master's degrees in Materials Chemistry from the University of Montpellier, France (2015), and in Engineering Physics from the Technical University of Munich, Germany (2014). I performed my graduate research at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland, where I studied the interplay of structural complexity and magnetism in non-stoichiometric praseodymium nickel oxide single crystals using neutron scattering and superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry. I received my Bachelor's degree in Engineering Physics from the National Institute of Technology in Calicut, India (2013).

I have received several awards and fellowships, among them the Swiss Nanotechnology PhD Award from the Swiss Micro- and Nanotechnology Network (2020), Swiss Physical Society Award in Condensed Matter Physics (2020), EMPA Research Award (2019) and European Commission Graduate Fellowship (2013).