The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Dr Jennifer Dionne one of the two 2019 recipients of its Alan T. Waterman Award. This award is NSF's highest honor that annually recognizes an outstanding researcher age 40 years or younger and funds his or her research in any field of science or engineering. This year's awardees will receive a $1 million grant over a five-year period for further advanced study in his or her field.
Dr Dionne is a material science and engineering associate professor at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the development of new nano and optical materials for applications ranging from high-efficiency energy conversion and storage to bioimaging and manipulation.
This research has led to demonstration of negative refraction at visible wavelengths, development of a subwavelength silicon electro-optic modulator, design of plasmonic optical tweezers for enantioselective sorting, demonstration of a metamaterial fluid, and synthesis of high-efficiency and active upconverting materials. Most recently, Jen has developed in situ techniques to visualize chemical transformations and light-matter interactions with nanometer-scale spatial resolution.
Dr Dionne has received awards and recognition from a diverse group of technical societies, including the Adolph Lomb Medal (2016), a Sloan Fellowship (2015), Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2015), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2014), as well as the inaugural Kavli Nanoscience Early Career Lectureship from MRS (2013). She was also named one of Technology Review's TR35 - 35 international innovators under 35 tackling important problems in transformative ways (2011). In addition, she has received the Outstanding Young Alum award from Washington University in St. Louis (2012), the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2012), an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Grant (2010), the Clauser Prize for best Caltech thesis (2009), and the Materials Research Society Gold Award for outstanding graduate student (2008). Jen has received several best paper awards at international conferences and holds patents on all-optical chiral resolution, upconverting materials, optical tweezers, nano-optical tomography, plasmonic modulators, and plasmonic display technologies. Her work also been featured in Nature, Science, and other major scientific journals, as well as on PBS and in Michio Kaku's book 'Physics of the Impossible'. Dr. Dionne perceives outreach as a critical component of her role as an educator, and is active both in the scientific and general communities.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
