2024-2025 Kavli Heising-Simons Junior Fellow
Faculty Advisor: Professor Felix Fischer
Christina Dadich is currently a researcher at UC Berkeley in the Department of Chemistry where she is advised by Professor Felix Fischer. Her doctoral research focuses on the synthesis and application of oxidative addition complexes that can be employed for catalyst transfer polymerization (CTP) to access carbon-based nanomaterials. Spanning the interface of synthetic organic chemistry, physics, and electrical engineering, Christina’s work ventures to narrow the gap between the single molecular scale and traditional macroscopic electrical circuit elements. Before attending UC Berkeley, Christina received her B.S. in Chemistry from The Florida State University.
Exalted for their transformative potential to advance quantum computing, Majorana bound states (MBS) are non-Abelian anyons that can emerge as zero-dimensional end-states in 1D topological superconductors. The access and exquisite tunability of hierarchical GNR/superconductor architectures would transition Majorana physics from a largely theoretical field of research to tangible and readily accessible materials with properties that have significant implications for the design of robust qubits. This could aid in resolving some of the longstanding fundamental scientific questions in the field, e.g., the intensely debated quantized transport in Majorana fermions.
As a Kavli ENSI Fellow, Christina will pursue an experimentally unrealized approach towards engineering MBS at a hybrid 1D GNR superconductor interface. While initial experimental evidence for the emergence of MBS in low dimensional quantum materials has largely focused on two systems—a 1D single crystal of metal pnictides (InSb) contacted by superconducting electrodes and chains of self-assembled Fe-atoms on Pb(110)—Christina aims to leverage the exquisite control of molecular bottom-up synthesis facilitated by the advent of a core-initiated catalyst transfer polymerization (CTP) to access MBS in GNRs.