Bayan Karimi, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering’s Cleland Lab, gets excited about work.
“When you discover something that is unknown and you find a way to prove it experimentally, it is a fantastic moment,” she said. “You forget about how much work you have done to get there.”
Karimi recently had another fantastic moment when the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) awarded her the 2025 Young Scientist Prize for the Commission on Low Temperature Physics (C5) in honor of “her seminal contributions to thermodynamics of quantum superconducting systems and for her quantum thermal transport experiments on them.”
She will receive the award at the 30th International Conference on Low-Temperature Physics in Spain later this year.
“To be honest, I was shocked, because I couldn't believe that I had the chance to win this prize,” Karimi said.
Her UChicago PME principal investigator Prof. Andrew Cleland, however, was not shocked that Karimi was selected.
“Bayan is an excellent scientist and has jumped into my group with both feet, integrating well with my students in the short time she has been here as a postdoctoral fellow, impressing us all with her intellect and boundless energy,” said Cleland, who will be receiving the 2025 Olli V. Lounasmaa Memorial Prize at the same conference. “We have really enjoyed having her in the group, and she is very deserving of the recognition of an IUPAP Young Scientist prize.”
Cleland is Karimi’s co-advisor for her Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Global Postdoctoral Fellowship, a European Union project award allowing scientists to pursue research outside of Europe. She will spend the first two years of the three-year fellowship at UChicago PME, before completing the project back at her home institution, Aalto University in Finland. Karimi researches quantum thermodynamics at Aalto, where her work has led to such breakthroughs as tracing quantum coherence decay to heat dissipation.
“By collaboration we combine the best of two worlds: expertise on quantum information processing at UChicago and quantum thermodynamics at Aalto,” said Aalto University Prof. Jukka Pekola, her fellowship co-advisor. “Fundamental science should flourish without barriers, and we need ambassadors to boost it. The Marie Curie fellowship is an important instrument in this mission.”
Pekola, Cleland and Karimi are all excited about the opportunities offered by uniting UChicago PME’s and Aalto’s quantum expertise.
“Quantum thermodynamics is a relatively new area of research, and it seems to mean different things for different researchers.” Pekola said. “Bayan is bringing a lot of concreteness to this research via her impressive experimental and theoretical results on quantum thermal transport and thermodynamics. She combines talent and passion in science she is at, with nearly unlimited energy.”
Karimi, meanwhile, has found her two-year home in Chicago just as energizing.
“You believe in a project enough to come around the world, and then you find how nice and supportive the area here is,” she said. “People really help you to achieve your goals. And then if it's something interesting, they team up with you. The atmosphere that I see here at UChicago PME, it's just fantastic.”
