Professor Laura Heyderman FRS

Laura Heyderman is Professor for Mesoscopic Systems at the Department of Materials, ETH Zurich. She studied Chemical Physics at the University of Bristol and began her career in magnetism as a Bristol University PhD student at the CNRS in Paris. She went on to investigate magnetic materials with electron microscopy at the University of Glasgow and then spent four years in industry in the UK. Since 1999, she has been based at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland.


Laura Heyderman carries out innovative research on materials and devices featuring mesoscopic magnets, and develops novel large-scale facility methods for their characterisation involving synchrotron x-rays, low-energy muon spectroscopy and neutron scattering. Her work provides the basis for new technologies in areas such as computation and robotics.


She held the Wohlfarth Prize Lecture at Magnetism 2015, the UK meeting run by the Institute of Physics (IOP) & IEEE Magnetics Society, and was awarded the Beller Lectureship at the American Physical Society (APS) Meeting in 2016. She is a fellow of the APS, IOP and IEEE.

Professional position

  • Professor, Mesoscopic Systems, ETH Zurich - Paul Scherrer Institute

Subject groups

  • Astronomy and Physics

    Condensed matter incl softmatter, liquids, nano-materials, Magnetism

  • Engineering and Materials Science

    Materials science (incl materials engineering)

Professor Laura Heyderman FRS
Elected 2023
Committees Participated Role
Armourers & Brasiers' Company Prize Committee January 2025 - December 2027 Member