Recent breakthroughs in materials science, for example the discovery of superconductivity in iron arsenide compounds, the identification of remarkably high thermoelectric figure of merit in sodium doped cobaltates, the progress in fabricating atomic-precision heterostructures of transition metal oxides along with exciting new developments in first-principles and phenomenological approaches suggest that the time is ripe for progress towards the long-sought goal of rational design of materials with desired magnetic, superconducting, thermoelectric and other electronic properties.

The KITP “Materials by Design” conference will bring a distinguished group of experimentalists and theorists to join the scientists participating in the KITP “materials by design” program in analysing the important issues in the electronic physics of new materials and the opportunities and challenges involved in discovering and exploiting materials with potentially useful properties. The conference will feature talks on the synthesis and properties of new materials, on important new spectroscopies and on new developments in theory and phenomenology.