Antonios Alvertis

Antonios Alvertis received his Ph.D. from the Physics Department of the University of Cambridge, where his thesis focused on developing theoretical descriptions of excited state processes in organic semiconductors, and was awarded the Computational Physics Ph.D. prize of the Cavendish Laboratory, as well as a Springer Thesis award. He then moved to UC Berkeley under an exchange research fellowship of the Winton Programme for the Physics of sustainability. In his time as a postdoc, he developed theoretical and computational methods for incorporating phonon effects and the role of temperature in the exciton physics of diverse semiconductors.

He later served as a staff scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, where he explored the potential utility of quantum computing for studying materials with strongly-interacting electrons. In January 2026, he joined the University of Texas at Austin with a joint appointment in the Department of Physics and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences. His group develops theoretical and computational methods in order to understand complex phenomena in quantum materials, combining insights from the fields of condensed matter physics, chemistry, and quantum computing.

Antonios Alvertis develops theoretical and computational frameworks aimed at understanding complex emergent phenomena in quantum materials, with a focus on the interactions between electrons, lattice vibrations, and light. The many-body effects described by the underlying theory often necessitate a computational solution of the underlying equations, for which high-performance and quantum computing are employed.

A central theme in Alvertis’ research has been dedicated towards understanding how so-called excited electronic states in solids can be controlled, using external handles such as temperature and pressure. This has led to predictions that helped minimize losses in LEDs, understand the mechanisms of efficient energy transfer, and elucidate how excited electronic states can dissociate into free electrons that may be harnessed in solar cell devices.

Moreover, Alvertis’ work develops ways of rigorously constructing theoretical models that retain only the essential characteristics of complex materials, yet capture the essential physics that is relevant to applications, and are also amenable to efficient solution on quantum computers. The aim of this work is to understand exotic phases of matter where the interaction between electrons and atomic motion is strong, and which pose a challenge to traditional methods of studying the electronic structure of materials.