Oak Ridge National Laboratory
E-mail: valeria_lauter @ avs.org

VALERIA LAUTER is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Neutron Scattering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (NSD ORNL) since 2008. She received her Ph.D. in experimental and theoretical solid state physics in 1997 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna (Russia). Prior to taking on her position at ORNL, she held a position of Research Scientist at Technical University of Munich (Germany) (1999 – 2007) and Research Scientist at University of Konstanz (Germany) (1995 – 1999); during a period of 1994 – 2008 she was Visiting Scientist at the Institute Laue Langevin, at Grenoble (France). From 2008 to 2017, she led the development of the Magnetism Reflectometer, which has evolved into a state-of-the-art instrument.

Her research interests include low-dimensional magnetic systems, topological systems, topological insulator/magnetic insulator heterostructures, oxide heterostructures, superconductors, magnetic nanocomposites and soft matter, polarized neutron scattering. She performs grazing incidence polarized neutron scattering research with a few recent examples like the discovery of a high-temperature ferromagnetic topological insulating phase by proximity coupling, providing a crucial step toward obtaining and understanding the occurrence of a ferromagnetic phase in a topological insulator at room temperature; realizing unique experiments on probing spin diffusion length combining in situ ferromagnetic resonance setup with polarized neutron reflectometry (PNR).

Valeria is fellow of American Neutron Scattering Society (ACNS). In the AVS she served as a chair and a vice-chair for Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructure Division (MIND) and earlier as an Executive Committee Member and a chair of a Focus topic on Neutron Scattering.