With applications mentioned above in mind, we seek and explore ideas to create new materials or engineer existing ones by manipulating their electron, spin, lattice, and orbital degree of freedom. We test these ideas using ground state and excited state calculations. We will use the results to design materials (both model systems and functional materials) and test with experiments (both at the material and device level). We will apply state-of-the-art synthesis techniques (e.g. solid-state synthesis and chemical vapor deposition), electron, optical and X-ray characterization techniques (e.g. high resolution TEM and X-ray methods both at MIT and Synchrotron sources) and quantum mechanical calculations (e.g. DFT, OCEAN and physics based high-throughput material screening). While the figure above depicts the overall scientific research approach in our group, discoveries at times are serendipitous and we aim to keep our eye for surprises and investigating them in holistic manner.