Ho Nyung Lee, a condensed matter physicist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been elected a fellow of the Materials Research Society.
The society has more than 13,000 members from 90 countries. It selects fellows for their distinguished accomplishments and outstanding contributions in advancing materials research. It names fewer than 0.2% of current members as fellows.
The society lauded Lee “for contributions to the advancement of precision synthesis and materials science of complex oxide thin films and heterostructures and for his leadership and service to the materials science community.”
Lee is an ORNL Corporate Fellow, the lab’s highest distinction for scientists. He is also ORNL’s program manager for one of the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences’ largest portfolios, the Materials Sciences and Engineering program. He heads a world-leading science and technology agenda that delivers fundamental research in key areas, including quantum materials, quantum information science, soft matter and structural materials. These discoveries accelerate the advent of next-generation energy and quantum technologies.
At ORNL, Lee has served as interim director of the Materials Science and Technology Division, which employs approximately 200 researchers. He has also led the Quantum Heterostructures group, which investigates the physics and materials science of thin films and artificial superlattice crystals. His experiments with oxide quantum materials involve atomic-scale synthesis using pulsed laser epitaxy and characterization using advanced spectroscopy, microscopy and neutron scattering.
In 2007, Lee received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. That year DOE gave him an Early Career Award. Among his other honors are two UT-Battelle Science and Technology Awards and the Korean Physical Society’s Bombi Award.
Lee came to ORNL in 2002 after a postdoctoral fellowship with the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Germany and a research assistantship at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology. He earned his doctorate from Korea University in 1999 and has since authored more than 250 publications.
Lee is a fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and of the American Physical Society.
At the spring meeting of MRS, to be held April 10-14 in San Francisco, Lee will attend a reception for new fellows. This year MRS celebrates 50 years of service to the materials research community.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. — Dawn Levy
