About

Christopher Gutiérrez

I am a scientist and illustrator based in Vancouver, British Columbia where I currently hold a Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute at the University of British Columbia. I earned my PhD in Physics at Columbia University in the STM lab of Abhay Pasupathy and I hold dual B.S. degrees in Math and Physics from UCLA where I also minored in Classics (Ancient Greek Literature). In 2020 I will return home to Los Ángeles and UCLA as an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy.

I’m originally from California and am a proud product of South Central Los Angeles. Raised by Mexican immigrant parents in urban Los Angeles, I am passionate about increasing (and retaining) the participation of under-represented groups in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) through scientific outreach for children in K-12 as well as speaking to college students about my career in science.

Art & Illustration: I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil. My original paintings and art prints have been shown and sold at (now closed) Ltd. Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington. This includes group shows MINTcondition (co-presented by Emerald City Comic Con), CATZ!, and a sold out 10/10 limited print run for Over the Line!: an art show tribute to the Coen Brothers. On the science side, my graphic design work and scientific figures have been featured on the covers and within the pages of Nature Physics, within Science, the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science & Technology newsletter, and on Phys.org (here and here) (see portfolio).

Science: I am broadly interested in creating and investigating novel quantum states of matter using a vast array of complementary experimental tools (scanning tunneling microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, photoemission, electron- and xray diffraction, electronic transport). A running theme in my research is learning how the spatial confinement of electronic charge into specific geometric shapes at the local atomic scale can create new quantum phases at the macroscopic scale. My original research has been published in scientific journals including Science and Nature Physics (see publications).