Christian Binek, scientific director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) EPSCoR-funded Emergent Quantum Materials and Technologies (EQUATE) project, is featured in an October 2026 Research Innovators profile by The Science Coalition.
Binek, the Paula and D.B. Varner Professor of Physics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), studies quantum materials that could enable faster, more energy-efficient computing. His research examines whether voltage can control a material’s magnetic properties without the flow of electric current, potentially reducing energy use and heat in future memory and logic devices.
Federal investment has played a central role in Binek’s career, beginning with an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award that helped him establish his research program.
“Since 2021, Christian Binek applied EPSCoR funding to establish a statewide quantum research ecosystem, and that ecosystem subsequently became competitive for a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC),” said Matt Andrews, director of Nebraska’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research Office and principal investigator of EQUATE.
That research capacity has continued to grow. Binek now directs UNL’s Atomically Engineered Materials (AtEM) Center, a six-year, $18 million NSF-funded MRSEC established in 2026. The center brings together 16 faculty members from physics, chemistry and engineering to investigate quantum materials and potential approaches to more energy-efficient computing.
“This new MRSEC award is powerful evidence of the kind of sustained research capacity EPSCoR is intended to create,” Andrews said.
Binek also directs the Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience and the Nebraska Nanoscale Facility.
Binek emphasizes that sustained federal support for basic research is essential to pursuing complex scientific questions and building multidisciplinary teams.
His career, he says, reflects the importance of maintaining curiosity and following unexpected discoveries. “Keep that fire alive as long as you can, because that’s where the magic comes from,” Binek said.
