Official handover now possible: Francesca Calegari received the ICO prize 2017

Francesca Calegari, lead scientist at CFEL, DESY and Professor at the University of Hamburg, now received the prestigious ICO Prize 2017 of the International Commission for Optics (ICO). Due to the pandemic, the official handover had to be postponed and could finally take place during the ICO-25-OWLS-16 Congress (5-9 September 2022) in Dresden, Germany. She was awarded the prize “for her innovative and pioneering research on the generation of isolated XUV attosecond pulses at the nJ-energy level and their application to the study of the electron dynamics in complex molecules”.

The ICO Prize is awarded each year to an individual who has made a noteworthy contribution to optics, published submitted for publication before he or she has reached the age of 40. The contribution must have a high impact - past or possibly in future - on the field of optics generally, opening a subfield or significantly expanding an established subfield in research or technology.

Francesca Calegari gave also a lecture on her award-winning work entitled: “Attosecond technology for the realtime tracking of electron dynamics in molecules” at the General Congress for optics and photonics ICO-25-OWLS-16 of the ICO and the international society for Optics Within Life Sciences (OWLS).

ICO Prize Webpage
 

ICO Award Ceremony: 2020 Nobel Prize laureate in Physics, Prof. Reinhard Genzel (right), and the chairman of the ICO committee, Prof. Leszek Sirko (left), presented the prize to Prof. Francesca Calegari (DESY). (Photo from News TU Dresden)