Basov is a Higgins professor and chair of the department of physics at Columbia University. He is also the director of the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontiers Research Center on Programmable Quantum Materials and co-director of the Max Planck–New York City Center for Nonequilibrium Quantum Phenomena. He previously served as a professor and chair of physics at the University of California, San Diego.
His research interests include the physics of quantum materials, superconductivity, two-dimensional materials and infrared nano-optics.
He received a Sloan fellowship in 1999, the Genzel Prize in 2014, the Humboldt research award in 2009, the Frank Isakson Prize in 2012 and the K.J. Button Prize in 2019. He was a Moore Investigator in 2014 and 2020 and earned a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Defense in 2019. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.