Nitin Samarth, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Physics and professor of materials science and engineering, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for distinguished contributions to the physical sciences. He is one of 252 leaders in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research and science elected in 2026. The induction ceremony for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October.
“Nitin’s research has significantly advanced fundamental understanding and applications of promising spin-related phenomena of quantum materials,” said Tracy Langkilde, Verne M. Willaman Dean of the Eberly College of Science. “He is also a thoughtful and strategic leader and dedicated mentor, who has positively impacted the college community. We are proud that he has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”
Samarth is an internationally recognized condensed matter experimentalist known for his leading contributions to understanding spin-dependent physical phenomena in quantum materials. He has developed diverse new families of materials platforms using a technique called molecular beam epitaxy. This work contributed to the birth of two major fields of study: semiconductor quantum spintronics and topological spintronics. The principal discoveries enabled by his materials synthesis are the observation of long-lived spin coherence in semiconductors, which was published in Science in 1997, and efficient spin-charge conversion in topological insulators, which was published in Nature in 2014. Samarth has played a key role in the materials community at Penn State and beyond as a co-principal investigator and associate director of the 2D Crystal Consortium, a U.S. National Science Foundation–funded national user facility that works to advance the frontiers of two-dimensional quantum materials.