Rice University’s Naomi Halas to Share the Isakson Prize

Naomi J. Halas, the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, has been chosen to share the 2014 Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids from the American Physical Society. Professor Halas and her colleague at Rice, Peter Nordlander, as well as Tony Heinz at Columbia University will share the honor for their work in nanophotonics. The group will be honored at the American Physical Society’s annual meeting in Denver in April for their “understanding of the photophysics or low dimensional material systems, revealing the rich optical properties of plasmons, excitons, and electrons in confined geometrics.”

Professor Halas, who was elected to the National Academy of Science earlier this year, is the founding director of the Laboratory for Nanophotonics at Rice and is also the director of the Rice Quantum Institute. Dr. Halas is a magna cum laude graduate of La Salle College. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in physics from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.