Peter Fischer of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will discuss the impact, challenges, and risks of using AI in magnetism research.

Wednesday Jun 17, 2026 6:30–8:00 PM PT Hybrid Meeting Online or at Quadrant San Jose, CA REGISTER

Magnetism and computing R&D have had a long-standing, mutually beneficial relationship. Magnetic materials discovery laid foundations for electronics, while advances in computing have shaped materials modeling and magnetic storage design. The recent rise of artificial intelligence has unprecedented potential to radically transform how R&D is carried out in the near future.

With this potential come important questions about AI’s impact, as well as the challenges and risks this new approach may bring. This talk will introduce AI’s role in advancing magnetism research and cover AI fundamentals, data requirements, and key challenges.

Examples will highlight how AI can accelerate discovery in magnetism and help evaluate impacts, opportunities, and risks, empowering the magnetism community to responsibly leverage AI in magnetic materials research.

Agenda:

Speaker:

Peter Fischer is Division Director of the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA. His research program focuses on the use of polarized synchrotron radiation to study fundamental problems in magnetism. He also holds the position of Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Fischer received his PhD in Physics from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 1993 for pioneering work with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism in rare-earth systems. He received his Habilitation from the University of Würzburg, Germany, in 2000, based on his pioneering work on magnetic soft X-ray microscopy.

He is very active within the IEEE Magnetics Society as Chapter Chair for the Oakland East Bay Section and as a member of AdCom and the Technical Committee. He is also the current Vice Chair of the Topical Group on Magnetism within APS.

Dr. Fischer has published more than 245 peer-reviewed papers and has given close to 380 invited presentations at national and international conferences. He was named a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Magnetics Society in 2011. For his achievement in “hitting the 10 nm resolution milestone with soft X-ray microscopy,” he received the Klaus Halbach Award at the Advanced Light Source in 2010. Dr. Fischer is a Fellow of APS and IEEE.