cool CME research groups

Hello everyone,
this is my first post, so I don't know if I can start this thread in this section but I really need some information.

I am interested in CME, in particular the cool part of it like high Tc superconductors, supersolids and other stuff like that which is usually called low temperature physics. But as an international students, I am aware just of strong groups, which are largely respected worldwide and usually have publications on high impact factor journals (they are the easiest to get info about by surfing the web).

So I would really appreciate if someone could list some interesting groups in the USA which are not main stream (I hope you will understand what I mean). For example,
I've also been acquainted with J.C Seamus Davis group @Cornell and A.Lanzara group @Berkeley, but even if I have a very good CV, I have few chances to be admitted in prestigious universities so I'd like to know if there are all around United States some emerging and young groups in less famous colleges which I didn't discovered yet.

Thank you (sorry 4 my english)

As has been discussed elsewhere, the best place to find good CME groups is in the mid-west. Try UIUC, OSU, CU-Boulder, etc.

Ohio is not an option

Why? It's arguably the least prestigious of the three institutions mentioned earlier...

[Ducks head as OSU students throw stuff]

Or were you thinking that it's beyond your league as well?

Nothing against faculty @ OSU, but the State of Ohio has a very bad reputation in Europe (Cleveland is known as "the mistake by the lake")....

Hence why, despite tremendous faculty, OSU has less prestige/is easier to get into.

The hatred against Ohio is vastly overrated. Not that I'd want to go there for the city, but if I were a CME guy, I'd definitely apply.

EDIT: That's also what we Steelers fans call it. But that's like making fun of Castilla because you're from Barcelona. Go visit for yourself and decide.

Easiest is to look up the top 20 schools in CM experiment and look at their faculty lists - whoever has started in the last 5 years is likely to have a good research program. Write to these people - if you are good enough they will write back

Good R1 schools generally hire more assistant professors than they intend to give tenure (the Ivies especially are notorious for this). Unless you're sure a person will get tenure, don't count on them being around after year 6: they may very well be, but there's also a chance they're forced to leave. You'll either have to find another adviser and restart your research, or follow your old one to a new, normally less prestigious school.

Before you think your potential adviser is immune, recall Sean Carroll was denied tenure at Chicago. It worked out fine for him (and I'm guessing the grad students in his group), but CalTech doesn't come calling for everybody.

This is not true any longer, and certainly not true in CM Experiment. Schools in general do not hire multiple people for a single tenured position in CM Experiment. The reason is economics - a CM Experiment hire costs the university $1-5M in startup costs, and even the Ivies do not have this money to throw around on many people. The number of CME asst profs getting tenure is >75%.

I mentioned younger faculty since they are the ones usually working on "cool" or "hot" topics as you prefer. Of course, most "cool" topics become "cold" very soon in CME. But you can still have a great PhD and learn a lot in a young lab that you will not learn in an established group. For example, Nuh Gedik at MIT is one of the best options for a CME student right now.

That makes total sense. My experience is in fields with large collaborations, where the faculty lab is pretty bare-bones (last summer all I got was a 1950's era desk with an intel 486). The money is at government labs, supercomputers, or in telescope locations, and either doesn't come from the university or transfers well to whatever hire they end up keeping. My bad.

Nice try, Nuh Gedik.