Lena F. Kourkoutis is an Associate Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. Dr. Kourkoutis received her undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Rostock, Germany in 2003, and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell in 2009. As a Humboldt Research Fellow, she spent 2011-2012 exploring cryo-electron microscopy at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. She returned to Cornell as a Postdoctoral Associate in 2012 and joined the Applied and Engineering Physics Faculty in 2013.
The Kourkoutis electron microscopy group focuses on understanding and controlling nanostructured materials, from biomaterials to materials for energy to quantum materials. They have developed new cryogenic scanning transmission electron microscopy techniques to gain access to low temperature electronic states, to study processes at liquid/solid interfaces in energy devices and to image thick biological specimens. Prof. Kourkoutis has been awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, a Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an NSF CAREER award, and is recipient of the Burton Metal awarded by the Microscopy Society of America and the Kurt Heinrich Award from the Microanalysis Society, among other honors. She is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences.
