Serena Eley

Dr. Serena Eley is an Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington. Prior to this, she served as an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Colorado School of Mines. She earned her B.S. in physics at Caltech then conducted research at the International Superconductivity Technology Center in Tokyo, Japan as a Henry Luce Scholar before earning her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation work, for which she received the John Bardeen Award, explored proximity effects and vortex dynamics in nanostructured superconductor—normal-metal arrays, revealing behavior that deviates from conventional proximity effect theories. After graduate school, she worked at Sandia National Laboratories on designing Si-based devices composed of quantum dot nanostructures and shallow donors for spin quantum bits and, as a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, on vortex dynamics in superconductors. Currently, Professor Eley’s research group studies superconducting and magnetic materials/devices. 

RCSA Scialog Quantum Matter and Information Fellow

Cottrell Scholars Award

National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award

American Institute for Physics – NSBP Joseph A. Johnson Award for Excellence in Experimental Physics

John Bardeen Award (University of Illinois, outstanding dissertation)

Luce Scholar (Henry Luce Foundation)

Vortex Dynamics in Superconductors

Skyrmion Dynamics in Magnetic Materials

Energy Loss Mechanisms in Superconducting Quantum Circuits

Next Generation Spintronics

(Select Recent Publications)

Critical current density in advanced superconductors

HS Ruiz, J Hänisch, M Polichetti, A Galluzzi, L Gozzelino, D Torsello, Sanja Milošević-Govedarović, Jasmina Grbović-Novaković, OV Dobrovolskiy, W Lang, G Grimaldi, A Crisan, P Badica, AM Ionescu, P Cayado, R Willa, B Barbiellini, S Eley, A Badía–Majós

Progress in Materials Science, 155, 101492 (2026)

Structural Properties and Recrystallization Effects in Ion Beam Modified B20-type FeGe Films

Jiangteng Liu, Ryan Schoell, Xiyue S. Zhang, Hongbin Yang, M. B. Venuti, Hanjong Paik, David A. Muller, Tzu-Ming Lu, Khalid Hattar, and Serena Eley

APL Materials, 13, 011112 (2025)

Quadrupling the depairing current density in the iron-based superconductor SmFeAsO1-xHx

Masashi Miura, Serena Eley, Kazumasa Iida, Jumpei Matsumoto, Hidenori Hiramatsu, Yuki Ogimoto, Takumi Suzuki, Tomoki Kobayashi, Toshinori Ozaki, Hodaka Kurokawa, Naoto Sekiya, Ryuji Yoshida, Takeharu Kato, Tatsunori Okada, Hiroyuki Okazaki, Tetsuya Yamaki, Jens Hänisch, Satoshi Awaji, Atsutaka Maeda, Boris Maiorov, Hideo Hosono

Nature Materials 23, 1370–1378 (2024)

Inducing a Tunable Skyrmion-Antiskyrmion System through Ion Beam Modification of FeGe Films

M. B. Venuti, Xiyue S. Zhang, Eric J Lang, Sadhvikas J. Addamane, Hanjong Paik, Portia Allen, Peter Sharma, David Muller, Khalid Hattar Tzu-Ming Lu, Serena Eley.

npJ Spintronics 2, 16 (2024)

Haley Cole, M. B. Venuti, Mun K. Chan, Brian Gorman, Eric D. Bauer, Mun K. Chan, and Serena Eley. Plastic vortex creep and dimensional crossovers in the highly anisotropic superconductor HgBa2CuO4+δ. Physical Review B 107, 104509 (2023).

Tsymbal & Shan X. Wang. Observation of anti-damping spin-orbit torques generated by in-plane and out-of-plane spin polarizations in antiferromagnetic MnPd3

Mahendra DC, Ding-Fu Shao, Vincent D.-H. Hou, Arturas Vailionis, P. Quarterman, Ali Habiboglu, M. B. Venuti, Fen Xue, Yen-Lin Huang, Chien-Min Lee, Masashi Miura, Brian Kirby, Chong Bi, Xiang Li, Yong Deng, Shy-Jay Lin, Wilman Tsai, Serena Eley ,Wei-Gang Wang, Julie A. Borchers, Evgeny Y.

Nature Materials 22, 591–598 (2023).

High kinetic inductance NbTiN superconducting transmission line resonators in the very thin film limit

Terence M. Bretz-Sullivan, Rupert M. Lewis, Ana L. Lima-Sharma, Peter A. Sharma, David Lidsky, Christopher Smyth, C. Thomas Harris, Michael Venuti, Serena Eley, Tzu-Ming Lu. 

Applied Physics Letters 121, 5 (2022).

Designing high-performance superconductors with nanoparticle inclusions: comparisons to strong pinning theory

Sarah C. Jones, Masashi Miura, Ryuji Yoshida, Takeharu Kato, Leonardo Civale, Roland Willa, and Serena Eley

Applied Physics Letters Materials 9, 091105 (2021)

Challenges and Transformative Opportunities in Superconductor Vortex Physics

Serena Eley, Andreas Glatz, Roland Willa

Journal of Applied Physics 130, 050901 (2021)