Archana Raja

Staff Scientist, Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures
Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Website - https://foundry.lbl.gov/about/staff/archana-raja/
Email: araja@lbl.gov

Archana Raja completed her Integrated M.Sc. in Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay before pursuing graduate studies in the United States, where she earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Columbia University under the supervision of Tony Heinz and Louis Brus. She later conducted postdoctoral research in the Applied Physics Department at Stanford University and subsequently joined the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley as a Heising-Simons Junior Fellow.

Raja is currently a Staff Scientist in the Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures Facility at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an affiliated faculty member of the Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute. Her work has been recognized with honors including the Berkeley Lab Director’s Award for Exceptional Early Scientific Career Achievement, the Early Career Laboratory Directed Research and Development Award, and the Institute Silver Medal from IIT Bombay. 

Her research focuses on understanding and controlling the electronic, excitonic, and vibrational properties of nanoscale quantum materials using advanced optical spectroscopy and microscopy techniques. By combining ultrafast laser spectroscopy with multimodal characterization methods spanning visible light, X-rays, and electron-based probes, her group investigates how energy, charge, and information behave and interact at nanometer length scales.

A major emphasis of Raja’s work is the study of atomically thin two-dimensional materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers. Her group assembles these ultrathin crystals into van der Waals heterostructures with atomically precise interfaces, enabling the exploration of emergent physical phenomena that arise from strong electronic interactions and nanoscale structural effects.

Using femtosecond laser pulses and advanced nanoscale imaging approaches, Raja investigates ultrafast dynamics and nonlinear optical processes in these systems, including exciton transport, moiré superlattice phenomena, and energy transfer across atomic interfaces. Her work also explores how local environmental effects and dielectric screening can be used to engineer material properties non-invasively, opening pathways toward new functionalities in quantum information science, optoelectronics, and energy conversion technologies. 

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