Lena Kourkoutis


Lena Fitting Kourkoutis was an American physicist working in the field of electron microscopy, and a professor of applied and engineering physics at Cornell University. Her research focused on the use of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope, providing atomic resolution, at cryogenic temperatures to study physical processes such as superconductivity and biological structures such as proteins.

Education and career

Kourkoutis received her Diplom in Physics from the University of Rostock, in Germany in 2003, and conducted her doctoral research at Cornell University, which she completed in 2009. She then moved back to Germany as a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Martinsried between 2011 and 2012, before returning to Cornell University in 2013, first as a postdoctoral fellow, before joining the faculty.
In 2016, Kourkoutis was named as one of the recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Death

Kourkoutis died on June 24, 2023, aged 44, after a two-year battle with colon cancer.

Awards and honors