Samuel Teicher

Biography

Sam Teicher is a Ph.D. student in the Ram Seshadri group at UC Santa Barbara. His research includes ab initio simulation and synthesis of new candidate topological semimetals. Prior to the joining the Materials department in 2017, he completed a 5-year B.S.-M.S. in the Applied and Engineering Physics program at Stanford and worked in Washington, D.C. at the Sunshot Initiative, which was in charge of the U.S. solar energy research and development plan. Aside from their application to quantum computers, Sam hopes that new theoretical and experimental developments in the study of topological electronic states can be applied to improve metals and semiconductors for existing applications---especially energy conversion and transport.

I'm a computational and condensed matter physicist focusing on electronic structure simulations of topological semimetals and the synthesis of promising candidate materials. My research explores materials with interesting magnetic transitions and/or strong spin-orbit coupling, many of which have topologically protected electronic states that have applications in fields ranging from quantum computing to energy materials (photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, catalysts).