Thomas Peter Devereaux | Faculty Spotlight
Thomas Peter Devereaux
Professor of Photon Science, of Materials Science and Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
"The goal of my research is to understand and develop a many-body theory of materials, both in- and out-of-equilibrium."
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in New Jersey, and raised in New Jersey and New York City. I was fortunate to have three great teachers in high school. One who was a geologist who liked puns ("Manhattan is built upon a pile of schist"), and the others a physicist and a mathematician that had immense passion for their subjects.
What led you to the engineering field?
I have always been good in math, but wanted to do something useful. Hearing stories of travel from the geology teacher and under the promise of a great salary at the time, I decided to try to become a petroleum engineer.
Where did you study?
Given my interest in petroleum engineering, I went to Colorado School of Mines, where realized that I didn't want to be a petroleum engineer. So I moved to the Cooper Union for electrical engineering along with concurrent enrollment at New York University as an undergraduate major in math and physics. At NYU I was greatly influence by my quantum mechanics teacher and by a mathematician at the Courant Institute who was interested in knot theory. This motivated me to pursue graduate study at the University of Oregon - as far as I could to try something different than NYC - where I obtained a PhD in theoretical physics.
What led you to Stanford?
After a postdoctoral scholar appointment at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, and UC-Davis, I took my first faculty position at George Washington University before deciding to move to Canada and became a Professor at the University of Waterloo, where I rediscovered my love for engineering.
I moved from the University of Waterloo, Canada, to Stanford in 2007 so that I could work more closely with the changing activities at lightsources happening at SLAC, and to build up a Materials Science Division there. After serving as Associate Lab Director and Director of the Division of Materials Science - SIMES (Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences) - I am now a Stanford Professor of Material Science and Engineering and of Photon Science, and a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy. My interests at Stanford have very much swung towards more applied research, such as those pertaining to battery electrochemistry and how spectroscopy can be used for targeted studies.
Please describe any of your current research you would like highlighted and describe its importance, and/or any research you hope to accomplish in the future.
My main research interests lie in the areas of theoretical condensed matter physics and computational materials science, using a combination of analytical and numerical tools to understand quantum materials. Fortunately, we are poised in an excellent position as the speed and cost of computers have allowed us to tackle heretofore unaddressed problems involving interacting systems. The goal of my research is to understand and develop a many-body theory of materials, both in- and out-of-equilibrium. This includes theories and simulations of photon-based spectroscopies (Raman & inelastic x-ray scattering/absorption, angle-resolved photoemission) with a focus on energy materials & ultrafast materials science to provide insight into materials of relevance to energy science. My group carries out numerical simulations on SIMES' high-performance supercomputer, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), and other US and Canadian computational facilities. The specific new focus of the group is the development of numerical methods to understand battery materials.
A list and links of some recent highlights:
Predicting Reactivity and Passivation of Solid-State Battery Interfaces, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 16, 51584 (2024).
Particle-hole asymmetric ferromagnetism and spin textures in the triangular Hubbard-Hofstadter model, Phys. Rev. X 14, 041025 (2024).
Low Temperature Dynamic Polaron Liquid State in a Manganite Exhibiting Colossal Magnetoresistance, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 186502 (2024).
The Wiedemann-Franz law in doped Mott insulators without quasiparticles, Science 382, 1070 (2023).
What advice do you have for aspiring scientist researchers in the field?
Follow what you love to do - there will always be a place for people who love their work. Perhaps the best advice is to make sure that you are in a place where you can capitalize on opportunities and good luck.
