Olga Smirnova is a German physicist who is Head of the Strong Field Theory Group at the

Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics, and supervised the work of a ...

Institute for

Nonlinear Optics Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behaviour of light in Nonlinearity, nonlinear media, that is, media in which the polarization density P responds non-linearly to the electric field E of the light. The non-linearity ...

and Short Pulse Spectroscopy and Professor at

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; also known as Berlin Institute of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, although officially the name should not be translated) is a public university, public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was the first ...

. Her research considers the interaction of strong fields with atoms and molecules.

Early life and education

Smirnova was born in Moscow. She started her undergraduate career studying physics at the

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

. After earning her doctorate in 2000, Smirnova became an assistant professor at the Moscow State University, and interested in

attosecond physics Attosecond physics, also known as attophysics, or more generally attosecond science, is a branch of physics that deals with light-matter interaction phenomena wherein attosecond (10−18 s) photon pulses are used to unravel dynamical processes in ...

. In 2003 she moved to

Vienna University of Technology TU Wien () is a public research university in Vienna, Austria. The university's teaching and research are focused on engineering, computer science, and natural sciences. It currently has about 28,100 students (29% women), eight faculties, and ...

(TU Wien) as a

Lise Meitner Elise Lise Meitner ( ; ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission. After completing her doctoral research in 1906, Meitner became the second woman ...

Fellow. After two years in Vienna, Smirnova joined the theoretical group at the

National Research Council Canada The National Research Council Canada (NRC; ) is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research and development. It is the largest federal research and development organization in Canada. Th ...

in the Steacie Institute for Molecular Science. In 2006 she was made a permanent member of staff at the Steacie Institute.

Research and career

In 2009, Smirnova moved to the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy, Berlin, where she launched her own research group studying ultrafast photonics. In particular, Smrinova is interested in imaging the structures and dynamics of molecular assemblies. The movement of electrons that occurs during chemical reactions happens at the attosecond time-scale. The ultrafast measurements performed by Smirnovoa make use of strong infrared fields to liberate electrons from molecules. Smrinova then images the motion of these electrons ''via'' their recollsion. Recollision describes the movement of these oscillating, liberated electrons back to their parent ions, resulting in elastic and inelastic scattering (i.e. diffraction imaging) as well as radiative recombination (i.e. the emission of XUV light). Smirnova was promoted to full Professor at

in 2016. Smirnova has developed new approaches to differentiate between left- and right-handed molecular enantiomers. Smirnova induces chiral dynamics in the molecular systems and probes them using a chiral experimental set-up. She introduces locally chiral electronic fields that can be tuned to excite enantiomers of a specific handedness. Synthetic chiral light can be manipulated to allow control of the intensity, polarisation and propagation of the optical response on randomly arranged chiral molecules.

Awards and honours

* 2022 ERC Advanced Grant * 2019

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

Ahmed Zewail Ahmed Hassan Zewail (February 26, 1946 – August 2, 2016) was an Egyptian-American chemist, known as the "father of femtochemistry". He was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry and became the first Egyptian a ...

Award in Ultrafast Science & Technology * 2010

Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. As of 2022, the DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 52,220, making it one of the largest national physics societies in the world. The DPG's membership peaked ...

Karl-Scheel-Preis * 2009 Leibniz Competition Award SAW award

Selected publications

* * *

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Smirnova, Olga Russian women physicists 20th-century Russian physicists 21st-century Russian physicists 20th-century Russian women scientists 21st-century Russian women scientists Academic staff of Technische Universität Berlin European Research Council grantees Moscow State University alumni 1973 births Living people