Brandon Wilfong

Assistant Professor of Science
College of Southern Maryland

About

Thank you for visiting my personal website. I am currently an Assistant Professor of Science at College of Southern Maryland.

I was born and raised in north-central Maryland and completed my undergraduate degree at Washington College in Chestertown, MD studying Chemistry/Mathematics and playing on the varsity soccer team. I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Maryland focusing on the synthesis and characterization of transition metal superconductors. Following my Ph.D., I completed a postdoctoral position at the United States Naval Academy teaching physics courses and researching novel antiferromagnetic materials for spintronic applications. Following USNA, I completed a postdoctoral position at Johns Hopkins University focusing on exploratory synthesis of quantum materials and the integration of AI/ML approaches to materials development in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. I took a short break from academia working at Booz Allen Hamilton performing quantum computing and sensing research for private and government clients.

When I am not teaching or doing research, I enjoy trail running, gardening, backpacking, cooking, and generally being outdoors with my two dogs. Always free to talk about running, soccer, and gardening.

Research

My research focuses on improving rational design of extended solids and exploratory synthesis to find pathways to improve material synthesis and discover new materials. I am primarily interested in quantum materials where microscale properties such as crystal structure and electron interactions lead to exotic macroscale properties such as superconductivity and frustrated magnetic order. I also collaborate to explore the use of ML/AI and GenAI to improve materials discovery and optimization of materials for targeted applications. I currently collaborate with researchers at University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and Georgetown University.

Selected Publications:

Wilfong, B., New. A, Bassen, G., Bunstine, W., Pekala, M. J., Rao, K. K., Pogue, E. A., Gienger, E., Winiarski, M. J., McQueen, T. M., and Stiles, C. D. Ternary materials discovery using human-in-the-loop generative machine learning. RCS Advances. 2025, 15.24.
Wilfong, B., Fedorko, A., Baigutlin, D. R., Miroshkina, O. N., Zhou, X., Stephen, G. M., Friedman, A. L., Sharma, V., Bishop, O., Barua, R., Bennett, S. P., Young Chung, D., Kanatzidis, M. G., Buchelnikov, V. D., Sokolovksiy, V. V., Barbiellini, B., Bansil, A., Heiman, D., and Jamer, M. E. Helical spin ordering in room-temperature metallic antiferromagnet Fe₃Ga₄. Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 2022, 917, 165532.
Wilfong, B., Zhou, X., Vivanco, H., Campbell, D. J., Wang, K., Graf, D., Paglione, J., and Rodriguez, E. E. Frustrated magnetism in the tetragonal CoSe analog of superconducting FeSe. Physical Review B, 2018, 97 (10), 104408.