Fall 2025: Our paper on physics education, incorporating a research project and coding exercises into existing undergraduate physics courses just came out in AJP.

Summer 2025: Our work studying stimuli-driven switching using state-of-the-art x-ray experimental tools was featured as an article at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Lab.

Spring 2025: We have fully deployed the technique of Dark Field X-ray Microscopy (DFXM) to study how neuromorphic devices evolve via filamentary formation, published in ACS NANO.

Summer 2024: Our work on studying phase change materials in neuromorphic devices came out in PNAS.

Summer 2023: This summer (2023), our group is welcoming many undergraduate students!

Summer 2023: Non-local synaptic interactions discovered in nickelate neuromorphic devices in our latest paper Nano Letters (2023).

Summer 2023: In collaboration with Eduardo da Silva Neto and Fabio Boschini, our latest paper features low-energy correlations that could be connected to the strange metal phenomenon in the cuprates.

Fall 2022: A new way of stabilizing 3-dimensional charge order in Pr-substituted YBCO is featured in our latest paper in Nature Communications.

Summer 2022: In our latest paper in Science Advances, we use coherent x-rays to image the formation of antiferromagnetic domains.

Summer 2022: Alex becomes a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar (2022).

Winter 2022: Frano receives the 2022 NSF CAREER award.

Fall 2021: In our latest paper in Phys. Rev. Materials, we use nano-focused x-rays to study how hydrogenated nickelates behave like synapses in our brain!

Summer 2021: Our group meetings and retreats are back after a year+ lockdown! (Palm Springs 2021)

Summer 2021: In our latest paper in PNAS, we propose a way to utilize the emergent properties of strongly correlated materials, controlled by light ion implantation, to produce circuit networks that mimic the emergent properties of the animal brain. This was also featured in the news.

Spring 2021: Alex receives a Cottrell Scholar Award (2021) to create artificial x-ray lattices and develop teaching tools that enhance the creative process.

Winter 2021: Our latest paper in Nature Communications adds important insight into the origin of charge ordering in the copper-oxide plane of high-Tc superconductors, highlighting the role of the Coulomb interaction. This is a collaboration with Eduardo da Silva Neto and Fabio Boschini.

Spring 2020: Our latest result on a quest to create an energy-efficient neuromorphic computer: we have a new hardware implementation of a neural tree using hydrogen-doped nickelate devices, and we image their behavior using nano-focused resonant x rays.

Winter 2020: Alex Frano receives the Sloan Research Fellowship 2020.

Winter 2020: Alejandro Ruiz et al. report the existence of a high-temperature magnetic anomaly in a three-dimensional Kitaev candidate.

Winter/Spring 2019: Our two latest results reveal in-plane diffraction rings in superconducting cuprates: Electrochemically doped La₂CuO_4+y showing a possible glassy state of the dopant oxygens, and T'-Nd₂CuO₄ showing charge ordering with a full rotational symmetry. The latter was work done in collaboration with our friends in the Comin Research Lab at MIT.

Winter 2019: Alejandro Ruiz receives the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Fall 2018: A new electronic order in 122 Fe arsenides. Read more here.

Summer 2018: U.S. Department of Energy funds an EFRC to study quantum materials for neuromorphic computing.

Summer 2018: Alex serves in the editorial board of the Honduran Journal of Physics.