J.C. Séamus Davis, the James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor Emeritus in physics in the College of Arts and Sciences has been awarded the 2026 Michael Faraday Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics (IOP) for “outstanding and sustained contributions to experimental physics.” The prize, which includes a gold medal, will be awarded on November 3 at the IOP Awards Dinner in Glasgow, Scotland.
The award committee cited Davis “for the discovery and exploration of macroscopic quantum phenomena and states of matter” and noted that he has been a leading figure in this area of research.
“Davis’ strategic approach has been to devise exceptional instruments and techniques that enable human perception and interrogation of the relevant macroscopic quantum physics, leading to the discovery of novel states and phenomena of quantum matter in many distinct materials systems. This approach has led to numerous noteworthy achievements,” the award committee stated.
“We invented new instruments to visualize materials at a quantum level. Before we pictured in our minds what we believed quantum matter looked like, but we never knew for sure as we could never see it,” Professor Davis told UCC News at University College, Ireland. They learned, he said, that “the quantum world is more complex than our models suggested.”
The Davis Group operates multiple suites of ultra-low vibration laboratories, previously at Cornell, and now at University College Cork in Ireland and at Oxford University in the U.K. Davis notes that his objective is to exploit the distinct capabilities and facilities at these laboratories to maximize scientific efficiency; he also works with the Max Planck Graduate Center for Quantum Materials in Dresden.
“Ours is as a single research group conducting scientifically harmonized studies with complementary scientific instruments at all the locations,” Davis said.
He is now using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze large amounts of data produced by his quantum imaging research. “In the past three months alone, we have made two major discoveries, with AI speeding up the process and analyzing in days the kind of large data sets that would take humans years to assess on their own. This is the new frontier in quantum physics,” he told UCC News.
Linda B. Glaser is news and media relations manager for the College of Arts and Sciences.
