Professor Anne L'Huillier of Lund University in Sweden has been awarded one of five L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards for 2011. She won the award 'for her work on the development of the fastest camera for recording events in attoseconds (a billionth of a billionth of a second),' her citation reads.
The researcher's work is funded by the EU through the ALMA ('Attosecond control of light and matter') project, under a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant worth EUR 2.25 million.
Professor L'Huillier is the laureate for Europe. Born in France, she obtained her PhD in Physical Sciences at the Université de Paris VI. She carried out postdoctoral research in Sweden and the US, before returning to France in 1986 to take up a position as a researcher at the French Atomic Energy Commission. In 1995, she moved back to Sweden, and has been professor of Atomic Physics at Lund University since 1997. The recipient of countless awards, she is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
She was among the first batch of scientists to receive an Advanced Grant from the ERC in 2008 for her work on the attosecond control of light and matter. Attosecond light pulses are generated when an intense laser interacts with a gas target. These short, coherent pulses allow scientists to study electronic processes at their natural time scale.
Her ALMA project investigates how elementary electronic processes in atoms, molecules and more complex systems can be controlled by using well-designed sequences of attosecond pulses.
Professor L'Huillier's fellow laureates come from around the world. The winner for Africa and the Arab States is Professor Faiza Al-Kharafi of Kuwait University. Her work on corrosion is of great importance to the water treatment and oil industries. Professor Vivian Wing-Wah Yam of the University of Hong Kong is the winner for the Asia/Pacific region. Her award recognises her work on light-emitting materials and innovative ways of capturing solar energy.
In the Americas, Professor Silvia Torres-Peimbert of Mexico City University scoops the award for Latin America for her work on the chemical composition of nebulae which is key to our understanding of the origins of the universe. Finally, Professor Jillian Banfield of the University of California at Berkeley in the US is named as the North American laureate for her work on bacterial and material behaviour under extreme conditions.
The five will receive their awards at a ceremony at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in March 2011.
- Extract from the EU webiste.
