Dr. Jelena Klinovaja

Biography

Jelena Klinovaja received her Bachelor and Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State University) in 2007 and 2009, respectively. She subsequently joined the group of Professor Daniel Loss at the University of Basel, where she received her Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in 2012, summa cum laude. In 2013, Klinovaja was awarded a three-year Harvard Fellowship to perform independent research in theoretical quantum condensed matter physics. She was appointed tenure track assistant professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Basel in 2014 and was promoted to associate professor in February 2019. Throughout her career, she has been offered several prestigious fellowships and has received research prizes, including the Swiss Physical Society Prize in 2013 in Condensed Matter Physics, sponsored by IBM. In 2017, she received the prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). Her research group is interested in various aspects of quantum theory related to condensed matter systems, with a special focus on topological effects and spin phenomena. They explore the physics of topological insulators, carbon-based systems (such as graphene, bilayer graphene, and carbon nanotubes), atomic chains, semiconducting 2DEGs, and nanowires. The work aims to study the properties of existing structures by combining well-known ingredients like non-uniform magnetic fields, superconductivity, and spin-orbit interaction to 'engineer' systems with exotic quantum properties, particularly in the context of strong electron-electron interactions treated with quantum field theoretic methods. Part of the work also relates to the physics of exotic bound states, fractional fermions, Majorana fermions, and parafermions, which possess non-Abelian braid statistics and have attracted considerable attention in recent years due to their potential use in topological quantum computing.

Research Interests