Date: Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Time: 11:00 am
Talk Title: New Frontiers in Cryo-Electron Microscopy: From Probing Low Temperature Electronic Phases to Processes at Liquid/Solid Interfaces
Location: Chemla Room (67-3111)
Biography:
Dr. Lena F. Kourkoutis is an Assistant Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics and James C. and Rebecca Q. Morgan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow at Cornell University. Dr. Kourkoutis received her undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Rostock, Germany in 2003, and then moved to Ithaca where she was awarded a Ph.D. in 2009. As a Humboldt Research Fellow, she spent 2011-2012 exploring cryo-electron microscopy in the Molecular Structural Biology Group at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. She returned to Cornell University as a Postdoctoral Associate in 2012 and joined the Applied and Engineering Faculty in 2013.
Dr. Kourkoutis was selected by the Microscopy Society of America as the recipient of the 2013 Albert Crewe Award. She was awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering in 2014, a Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for her contributions to the development and applications of atomic-resolution electron microscopy and spectroscopy in 2016, and a 2017 NSF CAREER award. She is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Kourkoutis electron microscopy group focuses on understanding and controlling nanostructured materials, from complex oxide heterostructures to materials for battery and photovoltaic applications to biomaterials. The presence of interfaces between different components is a key feature of all nanoscale materials and devices. Macroscopic properties of a system depend upon detailed atomic configurations, interfacial chemistry, and electronic coupling. Her group uses aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy and spectroscopy to determine the atomic-scale structure, elemental distribution and electronic structure of individual nanostructures and their interfaces.
