Victor Watson Brar is the Van Vleck Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics. He studies the properties of materials using scanning probe microscopes, which allow him to probe a crystal’s atomic structure and to image how electrons move through the material. His lab investigates the combined optical and thermal properties of materials, with an aim of creating patterned surfaces that are useful as either chemical sensors or as “laser sails” in futuristic laser-propelled spacecraft. Professor Brar is from Middleton, WI and worked in both microbiology and physics labs at the UW–Madison while in high school. He received B.S. degrees in Physics and Mathematics in 2004 from MIT and obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley. His postdoctoral work was performed in Harry Atwater’s lab at CalTech, where he was a Kavli Nanoscience Fellow.
A word from Dean Eric M. Wilcots:
Professor Brar’s success with scanning tunneling potentiometry has led to a paper accepted in Science that breaks new ground in the direct observation and imaging of electrical current flow in the viscous regime, an area of study that is considered important by top theorists worldwide.