Biography

Dr. Lakhan Bainsla is an experimental condensed matter physicist who works on various topics in magnetism and applied spintronics. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay 2016. During his Ph.D., he developed novel highly spin-polarized half-metallic ferromagnetic and spin-gapless semiconductor Heusler alloys for spintronic applications such as magnetic tunnel junctions for non-volatile magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM). As a testament to the novelty and impact of his Ph.D., he was invited to write a review paper and a book chapter and won the best thesis award for "Excellence in Ph.D. thesis work" from IIT Bombay.

After his Ph.D., he moved to the highest-ranked Japanese university – Tohoku University in Sendai, to pursue his first postdoc. During his first post-doc year, he worked on a Japanese national project titled "Electric field controlled MRAM". The following year, he got a very prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) for two years to work on “magnetic tunnel junctions based on spin-gapless semiconductors and their electric field effect”. With the ambition to get hands-on experience with spin-orbit torque devices and novel quantum materials, he then moved to the University of Minnesota (UMN) to do his second postdoc. In 2020, he received the prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship (MSCA-IF) grant from the European Union to work with Prof. Johan Åkerman at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where he worked on the development of spin-Hall nano oscillators (SHNOS) using compensated ferrimagnets and magnetic Weyl semimetals. After his Marie-Curie grant, he joined Prof. Saroj P. Dash's group at the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, where he worked on spintronic devices based on van der Waals materials.

He is an experienced user of cleanroom ISO 5-7 class and developed magnetic tunnel junctions and SHNOs down to 10-nm constriction width using the facilities. He has served as session chair for international conferences such as IEEE Intermag and Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. He is the recipient of several awards and prestigious and highly competitive grants in his career so far. He has active collaborations with multiple internationally known research groups. 

Area of Research

Quantum materials thin film and devices, Spintronic oscillators, Magnetic tunnel junctions for MRAM, Heusler alloys

Education

• Ph.D., Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, 2016
• M.Sc., Bundelkhand University, Jhansi, India
• B.Sc., Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, India

Work Experience

• Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, IIT Ropar, Ropar, India, 2025 - Present
• Ramanujan Fellow, Department of Physics, IIT Ropar, Ropar, India, 2023 - 2025
• Senior Researcher, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2022 - 2023
• Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 2020 - 2022
• Postdoctoral Associate, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA, 2019 - 2020
• JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, 2017 - 2019
• Postdoctoral Researcher, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, 2016 - 2017

Other Information

Awards and Fellowships:

• Ramanujan Fellowship, SERB, India, 2023
• Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship, European Commission, 2020
• JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship, MEXT, Japan, 2017
• Best Ph.D. thesis award for "Excellence in Ph.D. thesis work", IIT Bombay, India, 2017
• UGC NET-JRF in Physical Sciences, CSIR-UGC, India, 2010