Manuel Diaz-Avila
Associate Professor

Degrees:
PhD Physics, State University of New York-Buffalo (2006)
B.Sc. Physics, Universidad de las Americas-Puebla-Mexico (1996)

Office: B276H
Phone: 403.440.6029
E-mail: mdiazavila@mtroyal.ca

Education
Manuel was born in Mexico where he completed his Bachelor of Science in Physics at the Universidad de de las Americas-Puebla. After finishing his degree, Manuel was awarded a Fulbright-CONACYT-Garcia Robles scholarship to do his doctorate studies in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics at the State University of New York-Buffalo under the supervision of Dr. Francis M. Gasparini. Once he completed his Ph.D., Manuel received a postdoctoral research associate position in Spintronics at SUNY-Buffalo under the supervision of Dr. Athos Petrou. Manuel joined the Department of Mathematics, Physics and Engineering of Mount Royal University in fall of 2007.

Main areas of scholarly interest and/or expertise
Manuel's Ph.D research focused on the study of Quantum Superfluids. Mainly, his research was centered on the behavior of confined He4 at low temperatures under restricted geometries that modified the dimensionality of the system; which in turn modified its thermodynamic properties such as superfluidity and heat capacity. As a Postdoctoral fellow at SUNY-Buffalo, Manuel's research focused on the optical characterization of nanostructures based on III-V and II-VI compound semiconductors grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Manuel's research also involved electrical injection of spin polarized carriers in GaAs/AlGaAs light emitting diodes from a variety of spin polarizing contacts which might be relevant for the generation of new technologies based on Spintronics.