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Plenary Speaker

Professor Thuc-Quyen Nguyen
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
Email: quyen@chem.ucsb.edu
Phone: 805-893-4851 
Website:

Short Biography

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is the Director of the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids and professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nguyen received her B.S. (1997), M.S. (1998), and Ph.D. (2001) degrees in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles under the guidance of Professor Benjamin Schwartz. From 2001-2004, she was a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working with 2023 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Louis Brus and Professor Colin Nuckolls on molecular self-assembly, nanoscale characterization and devices. She also spent time at IBM Research Center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris on molecular electronics. She joined the faculty of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at UCSB in 2004. 

Her research interests are organic semiconductors, bioelectronics, device physics of organic solar cells, ratchets, transistors, and photodetectors, and sustainability.

She is co-authored over 315 publications and 3 book chapters that received over 40,000 citations (H-index: 103) and gave over 350 plenary/keynote/invited talks at national and international conferences, universities, and companies. Recognition for her research includes 2005 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, 2006 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2008 Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, 2009 Alfred Sloan Research Fellows, 2010 National Science Foundation American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellows, 2015 Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award, 2016 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019 Hall of Fame - Advanced Materials, 2019 Beaufort Visiting Scholar, St John’s College (Cambridge University), 2015-2019 World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds; Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics, 2019 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2023 Wilhelm Exner Medal from Austria, 2023 Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, 2023 de Gennes Prize in Materials Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2023 Elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) Chimie Ambassador in Chemical Sciences, 2024 Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, and 2025 ACS Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry. 

 

Harnessing Sunlight: A Villager’s Dream
Thuc-Quyen Nguyen 

Center for Polymers and Organic Solids and Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara

Email address: quyen@chem.ucsb.edu

 

Nguyen was born and grew up during the final years of the Vietnam War. Her house was burned down during the war and her family lost everything. Nguyen and her siblings grew up in small villages in Vietnam without electricity for 16 years and they lacked of basic needs such as foods, clothes, drinking water, etc. She immigrated to the United States (US) at the age of 21 years old with a few words of English and no money. She faced discrimination for being a poor immigrant. The more challenges she faced, the harder she tried. She used every setback and hurdle as a motivation to move forward. Within 10 years arriving to the US, Nguyen got a PhD from UCLA in Physical Chemistry. In this presentation, she will share her childhood’s dream of harnessing sunlight, her journey from a village girl to the US National Academy of Engineering member, how her role has changed from a housewife to one of the world top female scientists, her research in sustainable energy – organic photovoltaics, and how she uses her voice and influence to advocate for women in science and engineering.