Congratulations to Aria Wang, 2026 Recipient of the Climate Technologies Fellowship

Mitigating climate change demands a radical shift in how we generate, consume, and store energy. At the forefront of this transition is Aria Wang, an Applied Physics major (Class of 2027) pursuing an Energy Studies Certificate. Backed by the Summer Climate Technologies Fellowship, the Dean’s Research Fellowship in the Sciences, and the Rosenfeld Science Scholars Fellowship, Aria is dedicating her skills to unlocking the potential of quantum materials.

Working out of Professor Yu He’s quantum materials lab since January 2024, Aria’s research focuses on an advanced instrumentation project titled “Scanning Mutual Inductance Microscope for Superconducting and Magnetic Material Investigations.” Her goal is to accelerate the development of high-temperature superconductors, among other magnetic materials.

Superconductors conduct current without resistance or energy loss below a critical transition temperature, making them vital to emerging clean energy technologies like fusion reactors, high-efficiency motors, and quantum computers. However, because their operation is limited by temperature, raising this critical threshold requires extensive research.

To circumvent this issue, Aria’s project combines two major methodologies: two-coil mutual inductance and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). By integrating a high-permeability magnetic tip into the core of a two-coil mutual inductance assembly, a scanning mutual inductance microscope (SMIM) is created. Ideally, this would allow the microscope to focus a magnetic field to a precise, sub-micron region of a sample, thereby probing material properties such as magnetic susceptibility, superconducting vortices, and phase transitions at the nanoscale.

Aria has spent the past two years optimizing the SMIM design through finite-element electromagnetic simulations and constructing a non-scanning prototype. Her simulations have already demonstrated that sub-micron magnetic focusing is theoretically achievable, providing the team with a roadmap for construction. This summer, her work will focus on experimentally verifying the spatial resolution of the scanning probe, its ability to measure the magnetic response of sub-micron-scale superconductors, and methods for obtaining the superfluid density for various superconductors from such a setup.

Aria’s research has the potential to profoundly impact a wide range of industries, from reducing data center energy consumption to revolutionizing transportation. For Aria, this project is a stepping stone to pursuing a PhD in experimental physics. By mapping the microscopic mechanisms of superconductors, her work brings the commercial reality of emerging clean energy technologies one step closer.