In 1997, Jin formed her own group at JILA. Within two years, she developed the ability to create the first quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms. The work was motivated by earlier studies of BEC's and the ability to cool a dilute gas of atoms to 1 μK. The weak interactions between particles in a Bose-Einstein Condensate led to interesting physics. It was theorized that fermionic atoms would form an analogous state at low enough temperatures, with fermions pairing up in a phenomenon similar to the creation of Cooper pairs in superconducting materials.