Ashkan Salamat (Physics and Astronomy) and a team of researchers have made a breakthrough in the long-sought-after quest for a room-temperature superconductor, what they call the “holy grail” of energy efficiency. The research team, which includes Ranga Dias from the University of Rochester, established room temperature superconductivity in a diamond anvil cell — a small, handheld, and commonly used research device that enables the compression of tiny materials to extreme pressures — pressures that you’d only find at the center of the Earth. The research was the cover story in the prestigious journal Nature.