The findings could pave the way to new treatments for some of our most lethal diseases. For years, graduate student Lily Taylor and her advisor, Professor Jose Rodriguez, have been working on something big: a novel technique that would finally allow scientists to look closely at some of the most “chaotic” viruses in the world. Now, in Taylor’s first published paper as first author, they have done it…
The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions. The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $37,000.
Benjamin Hammel, a graduate student in Gordana Dukovic’s group at CU Boulder, received the Best Poster Award at the Mountain States Society of Electron Microscopists (MSSEM) Fall 2024 Conference. Congratulations, Ben!
Professor John (Jianwei) Miao at UCLA has been elected as a 2025 Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS) for his research in pioneering coherent diffractive imaging for a wide range of material systems and atomic electron tomography for determining the three-dimensional atomic structure of crystal defects and amorphous materials. Congratulations, John!
UCLA discovery uncovers unique features that advance understanding of the microbe’s movement and infection. African sleeping sickness is a serious infection caused by a parasitic microbe called Trypanosoma brucei. Using an imaging technique called cryo-electron microscopy along with artificial intelligence, a team at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA mapped the hairlike flagellum that the microbe uses to propel itself, identifying 154 composite proteins. Findings revealed that the parasite moves in a distinctive style, similar to a dragon boat, with unique adaptations that are essential to its ability to infect its hosts.
SLAC national accelerator laboratory¿s FEL R&D group is looking to hire a postdoc/RA to join their attosecond science team. The attosecond science group develops new FEL capabilities and supports cutting-edge user experiments. Recent results include the measurement of sub-fs TW soft x-ray pulses and two-color attosecond-pump/attosecond-probe experiments.
The attosecond science team is looking for an ambitious candidate to help develop attosecond metrology in order to study and exploit the unique properties of the single-spike FEL. This is an interdisciplinary role, mixing accelerator physics with attosecond science, and we welcome candidates from either background. This position is an opportunity to study both fundamental FEL physics and to build tools in service to the lab. The successful candidate will gain exposure to the cutting edge LCLS soft x-ray attosecond program and build a platform to launch their own research.
The role is centered on a project to build an attosecond streaking diagnostic in which the x-ray pulse excites photoelectrons into the strong space-charge field of the electron beam. Photoelectrons emitted earlier will be experience more acceleration, creating and energy-to-time map which can be used to decode the attosecond pulse structure and measure the mutual coherence between the electron beam and x-rays.
SLAC is one of the world¿s premier research laboratories, with capabilities in photon science, accelerator physics, high energy physics, and energy sciences. More information can be found on SLAC¿s website: https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/, https://accelerators.slac.stanford.edu/research.
More info on the job website: https://tinyurl.com/SlacJobListingAttosecondFel
The Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative (QLMC) is seeking a highly motivated and skilled postdoctoral researcher (or postdoc-equivalent) to join our team at UCLA. The successful candidate will work on cutting-edge research involving advanced photonic
systems, with a focus on fiber lasers, frequency combs, and their applications in precision measurement and quantum technologies.
Key Responsibilities:
• Design, develop, and optimize fiber-based and solid-state laser systems.
• Investigate and implement frequency comb generation and stabilization techniques.
• Explore novel approaches for low phase-noise density performance and carrier-envelope phase (CEP) locking in multi-channel systems.
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team to advance the state-of-the-art in photonic entanglement and quantum state manipulation.
• Publish research findings in high-impact journals and present at leading conferences.
Required Qualifications:
• Ph.D. in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Optics, or a related field.
• U.S. citizenship or permanent residency.
• Expertise in fiber lasers, frequency combs, and nonlinear optics.
• Strong experimental skills in photonics, including experience with laser stabilization, phase noise characterization, and quantum state manipulation.
• Familiarity with integrated photonic platforms and hybrid photonic systems is a plus.
• Proficiency in data analysis and computational tools for modeling photonic systems.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
See attachment for more information.
New CU Boulder research harnesses the power of an ultrafast microscope to study molecular movement in space and time.
The interactions in photovoltaic materials that convert light into electricity happens in femtoseconds. How fast is that? One femtosecond is a quadrillionth of a second. To put that in perspective, the difference between a second and a femtosecond is comparable to the difference between the second right now and 32 million years ago.
Subatomic particles like electrons move within atoms, and atoms move within molecules, in femtoseconds. This speed has long presented challenges for researchers working to make more efficient, cost-effective and sustainable photovoltaic materials, including solar cells. Imaging materials on the nanoscale with high enough spatial resolution to uncover the fundamental physical processes poses an additional challenge.
Understanding how, where and when electrons move, and how their movement depends on the molecular structure of these materials, is key to honing them or developing better ones.
Ultrafast nano-imaging of structure and dynamics in a perovskite quantum material also used for photovoltaic applications. Different femtosecond laser pulses are used to excite and measure the material. They are focused to the nanoscale with an ultrasharp metallic tip. The photo-excited electrons and coupled changes of the lattice structure (so called polarons, red ellipses) are diagnosed spectroscopically with simultaneous ultrahigh spatial and temporal resolution. (Illustration: Branden Esses)
Building on more than five years of research developing a unique ultrafast microscope that can make real-time “movies” of electron and molecular motion in materials, a team of University of Colorado Boulder scientists published in Science Advances the results of significant innovations in ultrafast nanoimaging, visualizing matter at its elementary atomic and molecular level.
The research team, led by Markus Raschke, professor of physics and JILA fellow, applied the ultrafast nanoimaging techniques they developed to novel perovskite materials. Perovskites are a family of organic-inorganic hybrid materials that are efficient at converting light to electricity, generally stable and relatively easy to make…
Anya Grafov, a graduate student in Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn’s research group, received first place for her Lightning Talk titled “Measuring Magnetic Dynamics with Extreme Ultraviolet Light” at the Joint MMM-Intermag Conference in 2025. Congratulations, Anya!
UCLA physicist John Miao pioneered a new form of microscopy with unprecedented precision and field of view. In 1999, then-graduate student Jianwei “John” Miao and his colleagues at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, demonstrated that a computational algorithm, combined with patterns of scattered photons, could reveal miniscule details previously impossible to capture with conventional microscopes.
Building on an established method for determining atomic structures called X-ray crystallography, they expanded its application to structures that lack the uniform, repeating patterns found in crystals. The algorithm reconstructs images from diffraction patterns — the arrangement of electromagnetic beams after they are bent and scattered as they pass through samples. This technique diverges from traditional microscopy by combining diffraction and computation to effectively replace the objective lens.
If you imagine microscopes as computer hardware, Miao’s approach is the “killer app” that unlocks their full potential. Over the past 25 years, scientists have integrated this approach into different types of microscopes, driving the field of computational microscopy to achieve unparalleled resolution and precision, and to capture the broadest fields of view yet on samples under investigation. These advances have led to brand-new insights into the structure and behavior of catalysts, superconductors, computer chips and next-generation batteries and materials…