James Analytis joined the faculty in January 2013 as the Charles Kittel Chair in condensed matter physics, and served as Department Chair from 2020-2023. He received his B.Sc. in physics from Canterbury University in 2001 and his D. Phil. from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes' Scholar in 2006. At Oxford, he worked with Stephen Blundell and Arzhang Ardavan on experimental and computational studies of quasi-two dimensional organic superconductors. Following his graduate studies, Analytis was a Lloyd's Tercentenary Fellow at the University of Bristol, where he worked on understanding the nature of anisotropic scattering in cuprate superconductors. In 2008 he became a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University where he worked on both pnictide superconductors and topological insulators. Analytis' current interests are unconventional superconductors, quantum critical systems, frustrated magnets and topological spintronics.
As Department Chair, Analytis created the Pi2 undergraduate fellowship program, the Physics Innovation Lab, and drove a number of transformative reforms in graduate admissions, the graduate PhD program, undergraduate mentoring, departmental finances and initiated new approaches to faculty hiring to ensure our department remained at the forefront of academic institutions. Analytis led the department through the peak of the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining the department's mission to provide a world class education to aspiring scientists and engineers.