Marcel Franz is a Professor of Physics at UBC and the Deputy Scientific Director at Blusson QMI. Marcel is a leading expert in theories of topological quantum matter, unconventional superconductivity and strongly correlated electron systems.
His group has made a number of significant advances in these fields, including the recent prediction of high-temperature topological superconductivity in twisted bilayers of cuprate superconductors.
Topological superconductors are a special class of superconductors with interesting and unusual properties with applications for future technologies.
Marcel has received numerous awards and recognition for his contributions, including the 2024 CAP/DCMMP Brockhouse Medal by the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP), the A.P. Sloan Fellowship (2002), and the Killam Research Fellowship (2007). He has also been elected a Fellow of the APS (2014) and the Royal Society of Canada (2022).
He obtained his PhD at the University of Rochester in 1994 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster and Johns Hopkins universities before joining the faculty of the University of British Columbia in 2000.