Sergei Kalinin, a joint appointee at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, has been selected for the David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Materials Physics by the American Physical Society (APS). As part of the honor, Kalinin will present an invited talk at the 2025 APS March meeting in Anaheim, California.

"I am deeply honored to receive this award, a very high recognition of the work of extremely talented teams at the University of Tennessee and PNNL as well as the groups I previously built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” said Kalinin. “From a young age, I’ve had a natural curiosity for asking 'what if' questions and looking at the world from unique perspectives. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with brilliant teams that have helped turn these questions into answers. We’ve scaled these answers from one-of-a-kind development to machine learning agents that can run scientific tools and discover new physics, new materials, and build the world atom by atom." 

Kalinin was selected “for sustained leadership and vision in integrating machine learning methods with physical sciences, particularly in the development of autonomous electron and scanning probe microscopies and applications to nanoscale electromechanics of ferroelectric and energy materials.” The Adler Lectureship was endowed in 1988 and is given to a scientist for “outstanding contributions to the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of materials and their properties.” 

Kalinin’s work uses advanced microscopy techniques to study materials and their properties. His research encompasses two major areas of focus: coupling between electrical and mechanical phenomena at the nanoscale and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to automated experiment and data analysis. The North Star goal of Kalinin’s research is using ML to directly control electron and scanning probe microscopy to discover physics of materials and manipulate materials at the atomic level, building artificial molecules and quantum devices atom by atom. These autonomous instruments will be key players in the materials discovery process, complementing the power of self-driving labs to synthesize materials and translate these discoveries from lab to fab.

Kalinin is the Weston Fulton Professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Previously, he was awarded the 2024 Peter Duncumb Award for excellence in microanalysis from the Microanalysis Society in 2024. Kalinin received the Medard Welch Award of AVS and the Edward Orton Award of the American Ceramic Society in 2023, the Feynman Prize of the Foresight Institute in 2022, the Blavatnik Award for Physical Sciences in 2018, a Royal Microscopy Society medal for Scanning Probe Microscopy in 2015, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2009, among other honors. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, APS, the Materials Research Society, the Microscopy Society of America, the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Foresight Institute, and AVS.