Peter Christianen appointed Professor at the High Field Magnet Laboratory
Dr. Peter Christianen has been appointed as a professor of soft condensed matter and nanomaterials in high magnetic fields at the Faculty of Science of the Radboud University Nijmegen as of 1 September 2013.
Christianen was awarded his PhD on Ultrafast dynamics of hot carrier in GaAs (hetero)structures in 1993 at the Radboud University Nijmegen. This research was partly performed at the High Field Magnet Laboratory (HFML). After his PhD research he became employed by the HFML. There he first focused on his PhD topic, semiconductor nanostructures. Ten years ago he also got interested in soft condensed matter, a collective term for elastic materials ranging from biological cells to organic materials, like liquid crystals and polymers. He has over one hundred publications to his name and is a gifted teacher, for which he was awarded the teaching award Physics and Astrophysics twice.
High Field Magnet Laboratory
The HFML is a partnership between the Radboud University and FOM, the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter. The lab has very strong magnets, which are unique in the world. The extreme conditions in these magnets bring surprising properties of materials to light. A major advantage of research with magnetic fields is that they are non-destructive: you can study materials without damaging them. It is also possible to levitate objects with magnetic forces and in this way investigate the effect of gravity on matter. The HFML is the coordinator of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL), the European collaboration of magnets laboratories in Nijmegen, Dresden, Grenoble and Toulouse.