Pranava Keerthi Sivakumar

Unconventional Superconductivity for applications in Spintronics/Magnonics

I am a postdoctoral researcher within the NISE department at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics. My broad research interest focuses on studying and functionalizing unconventional superconducting orders that exist either intrinsically in stoichiometric compounds or engineered through thin film heterostructures for applications in dissipationless spintronic or magnonic devices. During my Ph.D., I worked primarily on understanding the microscopic mechanisms of non-reciprocal critical currents in Josephson junctions known as the Josephson diode effect (JDE) in different materials1[1][2][3] and influence of different topological spin textures[4] in electrical transport. My current research focus is on understanding the interaction between the spin angular momentum of superconducting spin triplet pairs and magnetic moments in nanoscale devices.

If you're a highly motivated candidate looking for a Ph.D. position and the topics above pique your interest, check out this call.

References

[1] Nature Physics 18, 1228–1233 (2022)

[2] Nature 604, 653–656 (2022)

[3] Communications Physics 7, 354 (2024) 

[4] Nature Communications 15, 1120 (2024) 

[5] ACS Nano 14, 13463–13469 (2020)

Publications

Check out my complete list of peer-reviewed publications/patents on ORCID or Google Scholar.

Curriculum Vitae

• Education and Employment

  • 2024 – present       Postdoctoral Researcher, MPIMSP, Halle, Germany 
  • 2023 – 2024           Research Associate, MPIMSP, Halle, Germany.
  • 2017 – 2023           Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Physics (summa cum laude), Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Halle, SA, Germany. Degree awarded by Martin Luther University (MLU), Halle, SA, Germany
  • 2012 – 2017            Bachelor of Science - Master of Science (BS-MS), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), KA, India

  
  

  Selected Academic Honors

  • American Physical Society Division of Materials Physics Travel Award (2025)
  • Springer Thesis Award (2024) - Dissertation selected for book publication as part of Springer Theses series
  • Luther Urkunde – Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany. (2024)
  • INSPIRE Fellowship, Department of Science and Technology, India (2012-2017)
  • Brandeis-India Science Scholarship (2015)