Maiuri Wins 2015 Debut in Research Eni Award

​Margherita Maiuri, a postdoctoral research in the Scholes group, has won the 2015 “Debut in Research” Eni Award. This award is given to researchers under 30 years old who have earned a PhD in 2014 at an Italian University.

The Eni Awards were established in 2007 and have become internationally recognized honors in the field of energy and the environment.

Maiuri studies the early photo-induced mechanisms that govern the collection and transport of solar radiation in natural and artificial light harvesting complexes. Thanks to the development of an optical apparatus, which exploits ultrashort (femtosecond) laser pulses, it has been possible to observe in real time the primary steps of the photosynthetic process. The study of the natural complexes has been used as a guideline for understanding the energy transfer mechanisms in new bio-inspired artificial molecular systems. The exceptional scientific quality of the work is demonstrated by the publication of the results in high-level international scientific journals such as Science, Nature Materials and Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Read more about this year’s awardees here.