Prof. Lena F. Kourkoutis

Lena F. Kourkoutis is an Assistant Professor and a Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University.

She received her Diploma in Physics from the University of Rostock, Germany in 2003 and her PhD in Applied Physics from Cornell University in 2009. As a Humboldt Research Fellow Kourkoutis spent 2011-2012 in the Molecular Structural Biology Group at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. She returned to Cornell in 2012 and joined the Cornell Faculty in 2013.

Her research focuses on understanding and controlling nanostructured materials, from complex oxide heterostructures to materials for battery and photovoltaic applications to biomaterials. Her group develops and applies electron microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to determine the atomic-scale structure, elemental distribution and electronic structure of individual nanostructures and their interfaces.

Kourkoutis was awarded a 2014 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and selected by the Microscopy Society of America as a recipient of the 2013 Albert Crewe Award.