Biography
Paulo Eduardo de Faria Jr. received his bachelor’s degree in 2009, master’s degree in 2012, and doctorate degree in 2016 in computational physics from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
During his doctorate, he spent one year at SUNY Buffalo as an
exchange student. In 2017, he moved to the University of Regensburg, Germany, as a postdoctoral fellow funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and CAPES. He remained at UR as a postdoc researcher from 2019-2021 and research associate from 2021-24, acquiring his habilitation degree in 2024. In Dec. 2024, he joined UCF as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
He is a member and mentor of the National Mentoring Community, a program from the American Physical Society that supports and encourages mentoring relationships with Black, Latinx and indigenous undergraduates and graduate students in physics and related majors.
Publications
- G. Pasquale, P. E. Faria Junior, S. Feng, E. Collette, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, J. Fabian, A. Kis, Spin polarization detection via chirality-induced tunneling currents in
indium selenide, Nature Materials, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-02067-9,
(2025) - T. Frank, P. E. Faria Junior, K. Zollner, J. Fabian, Emergence of radial Rashba spinorbit
fields in twisted van der Waals heterostructures, Physical Review B (Letter, Editors’ Suggestion) 109, L241403 (2024) - K.-Q. Lin, P. E. Faria Junior, R. Hübner, J. D. Ziegler, J. M. Bauer, F. Buchner, M. Florian, F. Hofmann, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, J. Fabian, A. Steinhoff, A. Chernikov,
S. Bange, J. M. Lupton, Ultraviolet interlayer excitons from bilayer WSe2 , Nature Nanotechnology 19, 196 (2024) - P. E. Faria Junior, T. Naimer, K. M. McCreary, B. T. Jonker, J. J. Finley, S. A. Crooker, J. Fabian, A. V. Stier, Proximity enhanced valley Zeeman splitting at the WS2/graphene interface, 2D Materials 10, 034002 (2023)
- P. E. Faria Junior, J. Fabian, Signatures of electric field and layer separation effects on the spin-valley physics of MoSe2 /WSe2 heterobilayers: from energy bands to dipolar excitons, Nanomaterials 13, 1187 (2023)
- S. Raiber, P. E. Faria Junior, D. Falter, S. Feldl, P. Marzena, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, J. Fabian, C. Schüller, Ultrafast pseudospin quantum beats in multilayer WSe2 and MoSe2, Nature Communications 13, 4997 (2022)
- P. E. Faria Junior, K. Zollner, T. Woźniak, M. Kurpas, M. Gmitra, J. Fabian, Firstprinciples insights into the spin valley physics of strained transition metal dichalcogenides monolayers, New Journal of Physics 24, 083004 (2022)
- E. Blundo, P. E. Faria Junior, A. Surrente, G. Pettinari, M. A. Prosnikov, K. Olkowska-Pucko, K. Zollner, T. Woźniak, A. Chaves, T. Kazimierczuk, M. Felici, A. Babiński, M. R. Molas, P. C. M. Christianen, J. Fabian, A. Polimeni, Strain-induced exciton hybridization in WS2 monolayers unveiled by Zeeman-splitting measurements, Physical Review Letters 129, 067402 (2022)
Research Interests
- Research interests include a broad range of topics in theoretical condensed matter physics with a strong overlap with materials science. He employs computational and analytical approaches, such as first principles (ab initio) methodologies, effective Hamiltonians (k.p method and tight-binding), and group theory analysis to study the fundamental aspects and potential applications of various quantum materials in the field of optoelectronics, optospintonics, and quantum information technology.