Alex Baker is a materials physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he works in the Actinide and Lanthanide Science Group. His work with the Critical Materials Institute covers novel fabrication methods for magnetic materials, with the goal of reducing waste and enhancing performance to cut reliance on critical materials, particularly heavy rare earths. Also, he has worked on Al-Ce projects, performing structural characterization to identify lattice strain or void formation under load. Beyond CMI, Alex is interested in additive manufacturing of functional materials, chemical and magnetic spectroscopy using synchrotron x-rays, and thin film coatings for the national ignition facility. He received his doctorate in 2016 from the University of Oxford and Diamond Light Source, where he worked on time resolved magnetodynamics of thin films.
