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UCLA physicist Anshul Kogar named 2026 Brown Investigator
The Caltech-backed award will support Kogar’s research into high-temperature superconductors and strongly correlated materials.
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Malvika Choudhary - Thu, 21, May 2026
- 17:36 EDT
- 38
Anshul Kogar / UCLA
Anshul Kogar, an Indian-origin associate professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been named among the 2026 class of Brown Investigators by the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech.
Kogar was selected for his research aimed at addressing a longstanding question in condensed matter physics: how energy changes when materials transition from a metallic state to a high-temperature superconducting state.
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Kogar’s UCLA laboratory focuses on non-equilibrium states of matter, superconductivity, charge density waves, and Coulomb interactions in strongly correlated electron systems. His group uses ultrafast electron diffraction and time-resolved optical techniques to study how light can control and manipulate quantum phases of matter.
During his doctoral research under physicist Peter Abbamonte, Kogar helped develop momentum-resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy, or M-EELS, a technique used to study quantum materials. The work provided evidence for exciton condensation in the material 1T-TiSe2.
At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kogar worked in the group of physicist Nuh Gedik, where he studied how ultrafast light pulses can induce non-equilibrium states of matter. His research demonstrated that photons could induce a charge density wave in LaTe3 using ultrafast electron diffraction.
Kogar joined the UCLA faculty in 2019 after completing postdoctoral research at MIT. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from UCLA and completed his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Each investigator in the 2026 cohort will receive up to $2 million over five years to support fundamental research in chemistry and physics.
“My hope is that these awards will provide talented mid-career researchers with stable and secure funding at a moment of their career when they are poised to make a significant impact in their field, giving them time to focus and develop their line of thinking,” Brown said in a statement.
The California Institute of Technology announced eight mid-career faculty members for this year’s cohort through the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences. The program was established through a $400 million gift from entrepreneur and Caltech alumnus Ross M. Brown.
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