B.S., Physics, California Institute of Technology
Ph.D., Physics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Los Alamos National Laboratory (Postdoctoral Scholar)

Serena Eley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and the Materials Science Program at the Colorado School of Mines. She grew up in northern Virginia, where attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a state-chartered magnet school focused on pre-college science and engineering education. She earned her B.S. in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. Afterwards, as a Henry Luce Scholar, she gained experience performing high-pressure synthesis of superconductors at the International Superconductivity Technology Center in Tokyo, Japan. Upon completing this fellowship, Eley worked as a test engineering for Raytheon Infrared Operations in Santa Barbara, California before entering graduate school at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where she earned her Ph.D. in condensed matter physics. Her dissertation work, for which she received the John Bardeen Award, focused on proximity effects and vortex dynamics in nanostructured superconductors, revealing behavior that deviated strongly from conventional proximity effect theories.
Prior to joining the faculty at Mines, Serena was a postdoctoral researcher in the Condensed Matter and Magnet Science department at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and as a staff scientist in the Department of Quantum Phenomena at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). At LANL, her research on thermally activated vortex motion (creep) in superconductors with different defect landscapes contributed to the discovery of a universal relationship for a lower bound on creep rates. At SNL, she gained experience setting up test set-ups for, measuring, and designing Si-based devices composed of quantum dot nanostructures and shallow donors for spin quantum bits. Professor Eley’s current research interests include low temperature physics, applied superconductivity, disorder in quantum materials, and mitigating materials related issues that limit superconducting circuit operation. Outside of physics, Serena is an accomplished long distance runner, having placed 3rd in the Bighorn 100 miler (2015), 2nd in the Angeles Crest 100 miler (2017), 6th in the Budapest Marathon (2016), 1st in the Angel Fire 50-miler (2017), 1st in the Old Goats 50-miler (2014), and 1st in three Dances-with-Dirt 50K races (2010-2011).