Vivien Zapf is a condensed matter experimentalist at the National High Magnetic Field Lab at Los Alamos National Lab where she has worked since 2004. She studies magnetic materials, in particular quantum magnetism and magnetoelectric coupling and specializes in thermodynamic and magnetoelectric measurements at low and high magnetic fields. She received her B.S. in physics from Harvey Mudd College, her Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, San Diego, served as a Millikan post-doctoral fellow at Caltech and then a director’s funded post-doctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Lab.
She is a fellow of the APS and recently chaired the APS Division of Materials Physics. She received a Los Alamos National Laboratory Distinguished Performance Award, a Lee-Osheroff-Richardson prize, and an outstanding referee award from the APS. She currently serves as the deputy director of the Quantum Science Center, a United States Department of Energy-funded research effort encompassing approx. 17 institutions solving problems in the field of Quantum Information Science. She also serves as a thrust leader for the Center for Molecular Magnetic Quantum Materials, a US DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. She enjoys promoting outreach to under-represented groups in science including conducting demos of electromagnetism for young people.
