Senthil Todadri
Full Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Senthil Todadri joined MIT in January 2001 as an Assistant Professor of Physics, and received tenure in early 2007. Before that, he had spent a few years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, CA. His graduate degree is from Yale University, and undergraduate from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Kanpur. He was promoted to Full Professor in July 2011.
In the last several years, a number of materials have been found whose properties do not seem to fit in simply with conventional theories of the physics of solids. Striking examples are the materials that display the remarkable phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity, but there are many others as well. Strong interactions between the electrons in the solid and/or the presence of impurities play a crucial role in determining the properties of these materials.
Professor Todadri's research interests are in understanding theoretically the phenomena that could and do arise in such circumstances. More specifically, his most recent interests have been in developing a theoretical framework to describe electrons in metals that celebrated cannot be understood within the paradigm of Landau's celebrated Fermi liquid theory. In previous work he initiated the study of deconfined quantum critical
points, and developed the theory of fractionalized phases of matter where the electron has broken apart. Professor Todadri has also worked on the theory of electron localization due to impurities in various circumstances.