Ben Torralva

Ben Torralva is a Lecturer in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Texas A&M University in 2001. He was a staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before joining the Materials Science and Engineering and Climate and Space Science and Engineering departments at the University of Michigan in 2009. His research interests focus on developing models and theories that explain the unique response of matter to ultrashort laser pulses. Ultrashort pulses of laser light can alter the electron-ion energy landscape, leading to extreme states of disequilibrium. Subsequent materials responses include the observation of extreme ionic transport in the solid state and sub-wavelength periodic restructuring of atomic surfaces, among other phenomena.