Mildred Dresselhaus Award 2023 goes to a pioneer and a rising star

14 December 2023

Photo: private

Two outstanding international scientists: Prof. Lin X. Chen (left) and Dr. Liuyan Zhao.

Prof. Lin X. Chen from Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University, USA, and Dr. Liuyan Zhao, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, USA, will be honored within the Mildred Dresselhaus Guest Professorship Program 2023 of the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI). The Program includes an extended research stay at the Cluster of Excellence "CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter" as well as prize money of 20,000 euros for the Senior Prize and 10,000 euros for the Junior Prize.

The Senior Prize goes to Prof. Lin X. Chen from the Chemical Science and Engineering Division of Argonne National Laboratory and the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University. Lin Chen is recognized worldwide for her work on excited state transition metal complexes, e.g., as designed for solar energy conversion materials, via femtosecond optical and both steady-state and time-resolved X-ray absorption spectroscopy tools. Lin X. Chen has received numerous awards for her work: She started her career with an Excellent Student Award of Peking University, followed by a NATO Fellowship and a Distinguished Performance Award of the Argonne National Laboratory. In 2012, she became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 2020 she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK, Argonne Distinguished Fellow of the Argonne National Laboratory, USA, and Fellow of the American Crystallographic Association in 2022. In addition, in 2020 she received the Experimental Physical Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society.

"I congratulate Lin Chen and look very much forward to having her here in Hamburg. When she entered the field, there were only very few scientists in the world that combined laser spectroscopy with X-ray structural techniques at synchrotrons, and she is one of the pioneers who advanced structural dynamics studies using X-ray pulses as the probe," says her future host Prof. Christian Bressler from European XFEL and the Department of Physics at Universität Hamburg. “Lin Chen has done extraordinarily well, both in her experimental research and her scientific leadership. Her research interests perfectly complement those available at CUI and other nearby institutes.”

"Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus was one of my role models for my career"

Lin X. Chen: "I am very honored to receive the Mildred Dresselhaus Guest Professorship Award. Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus was one of the role models for my career. Her long-time contributions to science as well as the women in science cause have inspired me in many ways. I am very grateful for one of the legacies left by her, this Guest Professorship in her honor. The University of Hamburg and the European X-ray free electron laser (EuXFEL) and DESY facilities provide unprecedented opportunities for our research at the frontiers of science. I am excited and looking forward to my term there, working with Christian's group and the Hamburg colleagues to advance our understanding of science and making more impact on global energy and environmental research." 

The Junior Award goes Dr. Liuyan Zhao, Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on probing, understanding, and eventually controlling emergent electronic and magnetic phases in quantum materials, including both three-dimensional (3D) bulk and two-dimensional (2D) atomic and moiré crystals. To do so, her group develops and utilizes a broad set of optical techniques, including linear and nonlinear, static, and ultrafast, elastic and inelastic spectroscopy, and microscopy.

“Dr. Zhao is an excellent teacher and a rising star in physics,” says her future host Prof. Andrea Cavalleri, a Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD), and names some of the recognitions, she has received for her independent work at Michigan: the 2018 National Science Foundation CAREER award, the 2019 Bryan R. Coles Prize from the International Conference of Strongly Correlated Electron Systems, the 2020 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program Award, the2021 Sloan Research Fellowship, the 2022 Outstanding Young Researcher Award (Macronix Prize) from the International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers, and the 2023 Henry Russel Award from the University of Michigan.

"I vividly remember a talk given by her"

Liuyan Zhao: "I am deeply honored to accept this award. Professor Mildred Dresselhaus is an inspiring role model for many female scientists. While I did not have opportunities to directly interact with Prof. Dresselhaus, I vividly remember a talk given by her when I was a second-year graduate student and have been learning constantly from her work. It means a great lot for me to receive this honor named after her. At the same time, I am very excited about the opportunity to visit Hamburg in the coming summers, as it is the ideal place to visit for scientists working in non-equilibrium physics and ultrafast phenomena. I am looking forward to working with Prof. Andrea Cavalleri’s group at MPSD, the leading team in the field of driven systems. Furthermore, I am excited to learn about the state-of-the-art non-equilibrium theory in solids and photonic structures from Prof. Angel Rubio’s group, and microstructure-enabled nonlinear and ultrafast phenomena from Prof. Philip Moll’s group. Moreover, I further look forward to the interactions with other scientists at CUI, DESY and MPSD during my visit. I am thrilled about this opportunity to interact with leading experts during my visiting months in Hamburg, and further would love to maintain a collaborative relationship beyond the visit."