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

VALERIA LAUTER is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Quantum Condensed Matter Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (QCMD ORNL) and the Lead Instrument Scientist at the Magnetism Reflectometer at the Spallation Neutron Source, Oak Ridge (USA) 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).

Valeria 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). Being the Lead Instrument Scientist, she developed the Magnetism Reflectometer to be a state of the art instrument, she enabled new directions in neutron scattering research attracting diverse user community that allowed to realize unique in situ PNR experiments on the investigation of the proposed recently new form of the solid state, the so-called ‘spontelectric state’; probing weak ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductors; realizing controllable metamagnetic transition in metamagnetic artificial multiferroic films.

Valeria has published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles, edited one book and contributed to three book chapters. 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.