Biography:Cristiane de Morais Smith Lehner

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Cristiane de Morais Smith Lehner
EducationUniversity of Campinas (B.Sc. Physics 1985), (M.Sc., 1989), (Ph.D., 1994)
Scientific career
FieldsStrongly-correlated Systems, Condensed Matter
InstitutionsUniversity of Utrecht
Doctoral advisorProf. Amir Caldeira, Prof. Gianni Blatter

Cristiane de Morais Smith Lehner is a Brazillian theoretical physicist and researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Utrecht studying condensed matter physics, cold atoms and strongly-correlated systems.[1]

Morais Smith has authored or co-authored over 100 academic papers, including articles in Nature Communications, Physical Review, and Physical Review B, where several of her papers have been recognized as Editors Choice and Scientific Highlights.[1] As of April 2019, her work has received over 2600 citations.[2]

In addition, Morais Smith is an editor for the European Journal of Physics B, which focuses on Condensed Matter and Complex Systems [3][1]

Education

Morais Smith obtained a physics B.Sc. from University of Campinas in 1985, continuing to complete a M.Sc. with highest honors in 1989 entitled The Effect of the Initial Preparation to Describe the Dynamics of a Quantum Brownian Particle, under her adviser Amir Caldeira. She continued with Caldeira to complete a PhD in 1994, also at University of Campinas entitled Quantum and Classical Creep of Vortices Intrinsically Pinned in High-Temperature Superconductors. Much of the work for her PhD was completed at ETH Zurich where she worked with Gianni Blatter.

Career

Starting in March 1986, Morais Smith was a French language teacher at Brazilian Telecommunications Company (TELEBRAS), in Campinas Brazil, until, in December 1988 Morais Smith briefly became the owner of and teacher at a French language school.[1]

From 1989 to 1994, during her PhD, Morais Smith accepted a permanent lecturer position in the Department of Physics at the State University of São Paulo (UNESP), in Bauru, Brazil.[1] During this time, she was also a Visiting Scientist in the Condensed Matter group at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, as well as a guest PhD student at ETH Zurich.[1]

Following the award of her PhD, she accepted a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, also at ETH Zurich.[1] In 1995, she moved to the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Hamburg, Germany as a research assistant.[4] In 1998, Morais Smith began working at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, in a lecturer position. In 2001 she advanced to an Associate Professor position, also at the University of Fribourg. Since 2004, Morais Smith has been a full professor at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands.

At Utrecht, Morais Smith works in the Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics (a collaboration between University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, and Utrecht University), where she is a director.[5][1]

Other

Morais Smith says that "since I was born, I was always playing the teacher. That was my preferred game since I was a child. But I decided to be a physicist when I was 13." [6]

Morais Smith is fluent in Portuguese (her native language), English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch.[1]

In September 2002, Morais Smith married Stefan Lehner, a Swiss citizen.[1]

Morais Smith was featured in a Dutch newspaper article in 2018 for her work on chiral superconductors where the pairing function has a chirality e.g. [math]\displaystyle{ p_x + ip_y }[/math]. In layered chiral superconductors there is a geometric Meissner effect,[7] which is a variation on the Meissner effect.

Honors and awards

In 2001, Morais Smith was awarded a "Professeur Boursier du Fond National Suisse" or Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship for a project entitled Spontaneous formation of charge patterns in two-dimensional strongly interacting electron systems. [8][9] This prize is awarded to only 2 or 3 researchers per year, and holds a monetary award of more than one million Swiss Francs.[1]

Morais Smith received a People’s Republic of China 'High-End Foreign Expert' Professorship in 2014 and 2015 at the Wilczek Quantum Center, awarded by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.[1]

In 2016, Morais Smith was awarded the prestigious Dresselhaus Prize "For her outstanding contribution to the understanding of topological phases in two-dimensional atomic and electronic systems".[1][10]

References

External links