Deep Jariwala will join the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in January 2027 as the UT-ORNL governor’s chair for quantum devices. Jariwala is a nationally recognized leader in quantum materials and next-generation electronic devices. He will hold a joint appointment between UT and ORNL, with his academic home in the nationally ranked Tickle College of Engineering

Jariwala is currently an associate professor and the Peter & Susanne Armstrong Distinguished Scholar in the departments of Electrical and Systems Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). His research interests broadly lie at the intersection of new materials, surface science and solid-state devices for computing, sensing, opto-electronics and energy harvesting applications.

He completed his undergraduate degree in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University in 2010. Jariwala went on to pursue his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, graduating in 2015. At Northwestern, he made contributions to the study of charge transport and electronic applications of two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors and their devices, for which he was awarded the Johannes and Julia Weertman Doctoral Fellowship and the Hilliard Award of the department. Jariwala then moved to Caltech as a Resnick Prize Postdoctoral Fellow from 2015-201,  working on nanophotonic devices and ultrathin solar cells, before joining Penn in 2018 to launch his independent career.

Jariwala’s research has earned him awards of multiple professional societies including the Adolph Lomb Medal of Optica (formerly OSA), the Peter Mark Memorial Award and Paul H. Holloway Award of the American Vacuum Society, The Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award of the American Physical Society, the Army Research Office and Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Awards, TMS Frontiers in Materials Award, Intel Rising Star Award, IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, IEEE Nanotechnology Council Early Career Award, IEEE Benjamin Franklin Key Award, IUPAP Early Career Scientist Prize in Semiconductors, the SPIE early career achievement award, the Kavli Early Career Lectureship of MRS, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in addition to being named in Forbes Magazine list of 30 scientists under 30 and is an invitee to Frontiers of Engineering conference of the National Academy of Engineering (2019, 2025).

In 2022, his work on ferroelectric diode memory was also awarded with the prestigious Bell Labs Prize worth $100,000. In addition, he has received the S. Reid Warren Jr. award and Undergraduate Research Mentoring award given to one faculty member every year at Penn Engineering for inspiring and motivating undergraduate students through teaching and research. 

He currently serves as an associate editor (AE) for ACS Nano Letters and has served as an AE for IEEE Photonics Technology Letters as well as npj 2D materials and applications in the past. He has published over 180 journal papers with more than 26,000 citations and holds several patents. He serves as the associate editor for Nano Letters (ACS) and has been appointed asaDistinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Nanotechnology Council for 2025 as well as Fellow of Optica (2026). At Penn, he leads a research group comprising more than 10 graduate and postdoctoral researchers supported by a variety of government agencies (NSF, DARPA, ARO, AFOSR, ONR), industries and private foundations. He is the co-founder of Agni Semiconductor, a start-up company based on his research of ferroelectric diode memory aiming to commercialize the technology.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u1CHA2sAAAAJ&hl=en

Lab website: https://jariwala.seas.upenn.edu/