Professor Physics & Astronomy Clippinger Member Nanoscale & Quantum Phenomena Institute (NQPI) Condensed Matter and Surface Sciences Program (now merged with the Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute ) Personal Profile Saw-Wai Hla received his Master of Science from the University of Yangon, Myanmar in the area of experimental solid state physics/high-Tc in 1990. Following this, he was awarded a spot at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. There he received his diploma in theoretical condensed matter physics in 1993. However, his true love has always been experimental physics. So he joined the ICTP-IJS program at the University of Ljublijana, Slovenia, where he worked in the area of experimental surface and thin film physics, and received his Ph.D. in 1997. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at the TASC-INFM and ELETTRA Synchrotron Facility in Trieste, Italy, from 1997-1998, after which he took up post-doctoral p