Kyla Rutherford (RMIT) is one of three new Women in FLEET Honours students announced today
Please welcome FLEET’s three new Women in FLEET Honours students:
- Kyla Rutherford (RMIT)
- Olivia Kong (UNSW)
- Robin Hu (ANU)
Kyla, Olivia and Robin have all received Women in FLEET Honours Scholarships, which are awarded to high performing students doing their Honours research project with FLEET.
Kyla Rutherford will be working with Jared Cole at RMIT to understand transport properties in two-dimensional electron gases, a key part of the research at FLEET. Semiconductor superlattices allow the modification of the electronic band structure of a 2D electron gas through periodic patterning, which is a potential method for realising topological effects. Kyla’s project will investigate a way of computationally modelling superlattices within 2D electron gases to understand the role of the superlattice parameters, disorder and other device parameters.
Robin (Yow-Ming) Hu will be working with Elena Ostrovskaya at ANU characterise the topology of an exciton-polariton system and to show how to calculate and measure its quantum geometric tensor (including complex Berry curvature). This works towards a key objectives of FLEET Research Theme 2 to observe, theoretically and experimentally, topologically protected states in an exciton-polariton system.
Exciton polaritons represent an inherently non-Hermitian system (with gain and loss), but generalisation of the concept of topological invariants and topological protection to such systems is far from trivial. Robin will be working towards improved observation of the dynamical consequences of this novel topology, e.g. a non-Hermitian anomalous Hall effect and non-Hermitian skin effect in exciton-polariton systems.
Olivia Kong, (UNSW), Women in FLEET Honours student
Olivia Kong, currently doing a double degree in Science and Arts, will be working with Alex Hamilton and Matthew Rendell at UNSW to fabricate germanium based hole samples. This is a part of the project also involving FLEET AIs Karina Hudson and Susan Coppersmith in Research Theme 1. Olivia will be fabricating quantum devices and using ultra-low temperature measurement facilities to study spin-orbit interactions towards the ultimate goal of making topological states in artificial superlattices.
Women in FLEET Honours and PhD Scholarships are open to students who identify as female and are accepted into an Honours or PhD program to work with one of FLEET’s investigators, and are one of the Centre’s contributions to increasing the number of women in science. Scholarships are typically nominated by their supervisor. Read more about equity and fairness at FLEET, and other FLEET scholarships.