Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is the Director of the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids and professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nguyen received her B.S. (1997), M.S. (1998), and Ph.D. (2001) degrees in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. From 2001-2004, she was a research associate in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working on molecular self-assembly, nanoscale characterization and devices. She also spent time at IBM Research Center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris on molecular electronics. She joined the faculty of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at UCSB in 2004.
Her research interests are doping and charge transport in organic semiconductors, bioelectronics, and device physics of organic solar cells, ratchets, transistors, and photodetectors. She is co-authored over 310 publications and 3 book chapters that received over 38,000 citations (H-index: 102) and gave over 335 plenary/keynote/invited talks at national and international conferences, universities, and companies. Recognition for her research includes 2005 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, 2006 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2008 Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, 2009 Alfred Sloan Research Fellows, 2010 National Science Foundation American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellows, 2015 Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award, 2016 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019 Hall of Fame - Advanced Materials, 2019 Beaufort Visiting Scholar, St John’s College, Cambridge University, 2015-2019 World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds; Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics, 2019 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2021 & 2022 Women in Materials Science by Advanced Materials, 2023 Wilhelm Exner Medal from Austria, 2023 Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, 2023 de Gennes Prize in Materials Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2023 Elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and 2024 Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences.