Jennifer Dionne

Jennifer Dionne is an assistant professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford. Dionne received her Ph.D. in Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology and B.S. degrees in Physics and Systems & Electrical Engineering from Washington University. Prior to joining Stanford, she served as a postdoctoral researcher in Chemistry at Berkeley. When not in the lab, she enjoys teaching three classes (“Materials Chemistry,” “Optoelectronics,” and “Science of the Impossible”), exploring the intersection of art and science and cycling the latest century.

Dionne’s research develops new nano and optical materials for applications ranging from high-efficiency energy conversion and storage to bioimaging and manipulation. This research has led to demonstration of negative refraction at visible wavelengths, development of a subwavelength silicon electro-optic modulator, design of plasmonic optical tweezers for nano-specimen trapping, demonstration of a metamaterial fluid, and synthesis of high-efficiency and active upconverting materials. Most recently, she has developed in situ techniques to visualize chemical transformations and light-matter interactions with nanometer-scale spatial resolution.

In 2016, she received OSA’s Adolph Lomb Medal “for revealing nanoscopic optical phenomena in metal optics.”