Ranga P. Dias

Ranga P. Dias was born into a middle-class family in Kottawa, Sri Lanka.[7][8][9][10] He is the eldest of three children, and has a younger brother and sister. He completed elementary school at the St. Joseph's Boys' College, Nugegoda, middle school at the President's College, Maharagama and high school studies at the Royal College, Colombo.[10]

He received his B.S. in physics from the University of Colombo in 2006.[11] In 2013, he obtained his Ph.D. in physics from Washington State University, where he studied under Professor Choong-shik Yoo.[12] After his Ph.D., he was hired by Professor Isaac Silvera at the Department of Physics, Harvard University, to research metallic hydrogen.[13][14]

In 2017, Dias became an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester.[15]

Dias' research focuses on properties of materials at extreme pressure and temperature conditions. These materials exhibit fundamental changes in their properties, potentially leading to the discovery of novel phenomena and exotic states of matter that do not exist under normal conditions. He is particularly interested in high temperature superconductivity and quantum phase transitions of hydrogen and hydride materials.[16][17][18][19][20] His research utilizes a diamond anvil cell and lasers to achieve extreme pressure and temperatures in materials.[21]

In 2021, he was named as an innovation leader in the Time100 Next list.[22][23]

Dias' research into room temperature superconductivity and metallic hydrogen has been the subject of controversy and scrutiny due to concerns regarding reproducibility.[24][25][26][27][28]

In 2020, Dias published a paper in Nature describing room-temperature superconductivity in a carbonaceous sulfur hydride.[29][4] When asked about a potential Nobel prize for this discovery, Dias said: “Yes, this has a potential for such high recognition, but I do not believe this will happen in the near future.”[10]

The paper was retracted in 2022, however, Dias and co-author Salamat denied accusations of misconduct, and three subsequent investigations by the University of Rochester found no evidence of misconduct.[3][4] Sara Miller, a University of Rochester spokeswoman, said that after two university inquiries, “it was determined that there was no evidence that supported the concerns.” She also said that the university had “considered the matter of the September 2022 retraction of the Nature paper and came to the same conclusion.”[30] Condensed matter theorist Jorge E. Hirsch was the first to question peculiarities in the published data.[31] Marvin L. Cohen, National Medal of Science recipient and former president of the American Physical Society, was also an early voice pointing out problems with the carbonaceous sulfur hydride paper.[32] Dias and his co-authors dispute the retraction of the paper on the grounds that the scientific conclusions in the paper have not been retracted. Instead, the retraction was based on the novel background subtraction methodology that was used and described in the paper. Dias claims that the raw data itself demonstrates the claimed superconducting signal in CSH and this conclusion has not been retracted by the authors.

In 2023, James Hamlin, a physicist at the University of Florida, alleged that Ranga may have copied data in a 2021 paper from an experiment on a different material in his 2013 Ph.D. thesis. Coauthor Ashkan Salamat denied accusations of wrongdoing in an interview.[4] However, the journal Physical Review Letters, subsequently added an 'expression of concern' to the paper, and is conducting an investigation.[33] Analysis of Dias' Ph.D. thesis reviewed by Lisa Rasmussen, a research ethicist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, indicates there is obvious plagiarism.[34]

In March 2023, a reporter for Quanta Magazine found a 2021 YouTube talk in which Dias claimed that his startup Unearthly Metals raised $20 million and listed investors that included the CEOs of OpenAI and Spotify. A representative for Dias then retracted the claims of both the funding and the investors, saying they were "aspirational."[3] Dias has since clarified that the amount raised in the seed round of funding was approximately $16.5 million and he has clarified that certain individuals are not yet investors but were the type of investors being sought at the time.

In April 2023, a comment on another of Dias' papers in the journal ChemComm (which was said to be a partial replication of his CSH superconductivity results) was published. [35] The comment claims that:

"...data were not measured in a laboratory, contrary to what the papers claim... [this comment] undermines confidence in the claim that any of the experimental evidence reported in those papers reflects the properties of real physical samples of CSH."

On May 11, 2023, a paper published in Nature by a group from Nanjing University indicated they were able to produced the nitrogen doped lutetium hydride compound reported by Ranga and colleagues, however, they did not observe near-ambient superconductivity. [36]

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