Aditya Sood, an assistant professor at Princeton University, has secured a grant from the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund to develop a novel dynamic microscope.
The upcoming imaging technology is poised to capture the fleeting behavior of electrons, heat, and ions inside operating electronic components on an unprecedented level.
Engineering solutions for the next generation of electronics require a detailed view of how charge and energy move at atomic scales. Working alongside Barry Rand, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, Sood intends to bridge concepts from nonlinear optics, bioimaging, and ultrafast science.
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The resulting multimodal platform will build high-resolution visual records of microscopic activity, offering crucial design insights for solar cells, batteries, and advanced data storage units.
For Sood, this ambitious project builds upon a stellar trajectory deeply rooted in India’s premier academic pipeline. Before arriving at Princeton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute, he completed his Bachelor of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur in 2011.
His undergraduate excellence was marked by the prestigious Batra Gold Medal and a General Proficiency Medal, foreshadowing a career spent pushing the boundaries of nanoscale physics.
Sood later moved to the United States, earning his master’s degree and a doctorate from Stanford University. During his subsequent tenure as a research scientist at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, he led key efforts to capture the real-time structural transformation of an operating electronic switch.
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His talent for translating complex phenomena into tangible insights has earned him teaching commendations since joining the Princeton faculty in January 2023.
The Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund, created in 2009 by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy, focuses on fostering bold scientific leaps rather than marginal improvements. Sood’s project stands out as an initiative that could revolutionize how researchers handle materials optimization, steering engineering away from trial-and-error methodologies toward targeted design.
By charting unknown territories in time and space, Sood’s team aims to deliver an instrument that provides concrete data for energy-efficient computing and global sustainability efforts. Capitalizing on a robust foundational education from India and cutting-edge resources in the United States, Sood represents a prominent wave of Indian American researchers redefining the frontiers of applied physics.