Peter

Schiffer

Peter Schiffer is a professor of physics and the dean for research. His office supports the Princeton research enterprise by administering both internal and external research funding, building research relationships with external sponsors of research, and supporting innovation, entrepreneurship and the development of intellectual property. The dean for research also oversees compliance with federal rules for the conduct of research.

In his own research program, Schiffer specializes in the study of magnetic materials and nanostructures. His current focus is on “magnetic frustration,” in which multiple interactions among neighboring nanomagnets are in competition with each other, leading to a wide range of unusual phenomena associated with the collective directions of the poles of the individual magnets.

Schiffer has published more than 200 journal articles, and his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Department of Energy, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and others. Among his awards are an NSF Early Career Development Award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. From 2020-2023, he also served as a senior fellow with the Association of American Universities.

He has previously held faculty positions at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Notre Dame, and he served in the central university administration at Penn State, Illinois and Yale.

Schiffer holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.S. from Yale. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in 2023.