Prize Recipient

Minjung Son
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"For the development of ultrabroadband multidimensional spectroscopy and its application to elucidate the carotenoid-mediated energy transfer pathways in photosynthetic light harvesting in plants."

Minjung Son earned her B.S. (2013) and M.S. (2015) in Chemistry from Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea, where she investigated ultrafast exciton dynamics of artificial light-harvesting molecular assemblies working in the laboratory of Prof. Dongho Kim. In 2015, she began her doctoral studies at the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology as a Robert T. Haslam Presidential Fellow. Under the supervision of Prof. Gabriela Schlau-Cohen, she developed ultrabroadband two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy, and applied it to the photosynthetic antenna complex of green plants to elucidate previously hidden photophysical pathways of light harvesting as well as photoprotective dissipation therein. Her work also contributed insights into the physiological relevance of the measured dynamics by implementing a model membrane that mimics the native plant membrane environment. After obtaining her Ph.D. in Chemistry in September 2020, she joined the group of Prof. Martin Zanni at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a postdoctoral researcher. Her current research interests lie on the interface of materials science, physical chemistry, and optical spectroscopy, where she focuses on understanding and manipulating the photophysics of energy transport in organic photovoltaic materials and exciton-polaritons towards next-generation solar cell devices using two-dimensional white-light spectroscopy and microscopy.

David Osborn (Chair), Robert Gordon, Andreas Osterwalder, Martin Head-Gordon