Vyacheslav Rotkin

University Park, PA

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award (Teaching & Research)
Project Title:	Physics of Moiré Twisted van der Waals Materials
Field of Study:	Engineering
Home Institution:	The Pennsylvania State University, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Host Institution:	Indian Institute of Science
Grant Start Month:	March,2025
Duration of Grant:	Four months

Brief Bio:

Dr. Slava Rotkin is Frontier Professor of engineering science and mechanics, and professor of physics and biomechanical engineering at Penn State University. He received his MSc in optoelectronics from Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University and his PhD in physics and mathematics from Ioffe Institute (St. Petersburg, Russia). He is editor of four books and special volumes, and author of 180 reviews, research papers, and proceedings. His recent work is focused on near‐field optics and plasmonics, nano‐biophysics, and two-dimensional quantum materials. Prof. Rotkin has mentored 30 graduate students, 11 postdoctoral fellows, over 60 undergraduates, and 12 high‐school students. He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, Honorary International Chair Professor at Taipei Tech, a Fulbright Scholar, a JSPS Research Fellow, a Feigl Junior Faculty Chair, and a Kyoto University Distinguished Professor; he is also the recipient of several scientific prizes, including Hillman Award, Libsch Early Career Research Award, and Beckman Fellowship.

Prof. Rotkin’s Fulbright-Nehru research is on an emergent class of novel two‐dimensional materials. It involves two projects focusing on: correlated multidimensional imaging, including Raman and near‐field microscopies (and/or other scanning probe and/or electron microscopies), to unveil the physical properties of twisted van der Waals (vdW) stacked materials and of the Moiré lattice phases formed in these materials; and near‐field characterization and theoretical modeling of these materials and of the quantized polaritonic structures made of these materials.