Warren E. Pickett

Professor, Department of Physics

University of California - Davis

One Shields Avenue

Davis CA 95616

Tel: (530)752-0926

Fax: (530)752-4717

email:pickett@physics.ucdavis.edu

Warren Pickett obtained his B.S. (Physics, Math) and M.S. (Physics) degrees at Wichita State University before going to SUNY-Stony Brook, New York to complete his PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics in 1975. He had postdoctoral research appointments at the University of Bristol, England, at UC Berkeley, and at Northwestern University, where his research centered on the electronic structure of crystalline metals and semiconductors, on semiconductor interfaces, and on superconductivity. In 1979 he accepted a research scientist position at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. Early in his years at NRL, Warren increased his activity in large scale calculations of the properties of condensed phases, using the NRL ASC supercomputer and early Cray machines (Boeing) to carry out a study of, for example, the heavy fermion superconductor UBe₁₃, which has 28 atoms in the unit cell.

He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1989, and shared 2nd Prize in the IBM Supercomputing Competition in 1990. At NRL Pickett was awarded the E. O. Hulburt Award in 1990 and the Sigma Xi Technical Achievement Award in Pure Science in 1993. He was appointed Senior Scientist at NRL in 1992. He received Alan Berman Research Publication Awards at NRL in 1983, 1998,1989, and 1992. In 1997 Warren took a professorship in physics at UC Davis, where he is a participant in an interdisciplinary program in nanophases as well as working in condensed matter physics research programs.

Warren Pickett has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Superconductivity since its foundation in 1989, and on the editorial board of Chemical Design Automation News from 1993-1998. He was a member of the Council of the American Physical Society from 1996-1999. In 2001 he became Editor of the Journal of the Physics and Chemistry of Solids, published by Elsevier Press.

His research focusses on moving toward a first principles description of the properties of complex crystalline materials, and he has begun collaborations with solid state chemists and chemical engineers as well as solid state theorists and experimentalists. Recently his interest in materials has expanded to include magnetic materials that become superconducting, ferroelectric insulators that become ferromagnetic, and more generally novel magnetic and superconducting compounds that are of interest to both condensed matter physicists, solid state chemists, and materials scientists. He has over 275 publications in the primary scientific literature, and has active collaborations in Europe, Asia, South America, and across the USA.