Bio

Kate Reidy will begin as an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford in September 2026. Her research takes a ‘bottom up' approach to nanoscale design, tailoring material properties by understanding and manipulating their atomic structure. She combines advanced characterization with in situ microscopy to elucidate growth mechanisms, chemical composition, and response to stimuli at the atomic scale.

Her research group aims to push the limits of nanoscale engineering by observing and controlling atomic-scale kinetic and thermodynamic phenomena such as adsorption, diffusion, nucleation, defect and interface formation - mapping such structural dynamics to quantum, energy, and opto-electronic properties. She is broadly interested in the functional utilization of quantum properties of nanomaterials in our classical world.

Prior to joining Stanford, Kate was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She completed her PhD in Materials Science & Engineering at MIT as a MIT Energy initiative and William Asbjornsen Albert Memorial Fellow, entitled 'Atomic-Scale Design at the 2D/3D Interface using Electron Microscopy'. She received her B.Sc in Nanoscience, Physics, and Chemistry of Advanced Materials from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her work has been recognized by the MIT School of Engineering, Microscopy Society of America, Materials Research Society Gold Award, 'Best Doctoral Thesis' Award at MIT DMSE.

Academic Appointments

2026-27 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • Ferroelectricity in atomic-scale titanium dioxide dielectric films. Science (New York, N.Y.) Das, K., Reidy, K., Husain, S., Park, J. H., Jayakumar, H., Thampy, V., Klewe, C., Ramesh, R., Minor, A. M., Raja, A., Salahuddin, S. 2026: eaec9417

    Abstract

    Ferroelectricity at atomic-scale thickness would have important applications in next-generation electronics. Here, we report that a ferroelectric phase can be stabilized in titanium dioxide (TiO2) films, a commonly known dielectric widely used in semiconductor technologies, by reducing thickness below 3-nm. Importantly, this ferroelectricity persists down to one nanometer thickness, approximately twice the unit-cell dimension. This thickness-dependent dielectric-to-ferroelectric phase transition demonstrates that an otherwise centrosymmetric, non-ferroic fluorite-structure oxide can undergo structural inversion-symmetry breaking and exhibit voltage-switchable polarization. Atomic-layer deposition (ALD) based low-temperature (below 400 Celsius) synthesis and the stability of this ferroelectricity on both Si and amorphous surfaces (such as amorphous SiO2, amorphous carbon films) demonstrate the feasibility of integration with a large variety of materials.

    View details for DOI 10.1126/science.aec9417

    View details for PubMedID 41785309

  • SRC-led materials research: 40 years ago, and now MRS ADVANCES Zhirnov, V., Chen, M. E., Malakoutian, M., Margavio, H. R. M., Pawliczak, E., Reidy, K., Yanez, W., Younkin, T. 2023

    View details for DOI 10.1557/s43580-023-00665-4

    View details for Web of Science ID 001094447800002