Venkataraman Receives Humboldt Research Award
Latha Venkataraman, the Lawrence Gussman Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Chemistry, has received a Humboldt Research Award. She will be working on Surface Physics, Solid State and Surface Physical Chemistry, and Material Characterisation in collaboration with her host, Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Evers, at the Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Regensburg, Regensburg.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation gives financial awards to leading researchers and internationally renowned scientists "whose fundamental discoveries, new theories or findings have had a lasting effect on their discipline beyond their immediate research area and who are expected, moreover, to continue producing outstanding research in the future." (Humboldt Foundation) The €60,000 award enables recipients to work in Germany anywhere from six months to a full year.
Latha Venkataraman received her Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993 where she did her undergraduate thesis with Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus calculating the phonon modes of carbon nanotubes. She then moved to Harvard University and obtained her Ph.D. in 1999 working under the guidance of Prof. Charles Lieber investigating electronic properties of one-dimensional systems. She worked as a research scientist at Vytran Corporation from 1999 to 2002. In 2003, she joined Columbia University as a research scientist. She started her independent career as an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University in 2007, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2012 and Professor in 2016. She is currently Lawrence Gussman Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Chemistry. Latha Venkataraman served as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs from January 2019 through July 2022. Prominent awards she has received include the National Science Foundation Career Award, Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry. Latha Venkataraman currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Nano Letters and Chemical Science.
