Tunisia-Tunisian Moungi Bawendi, possible laureate for 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

“The trio’s synthesis of nanocrystals has gone on to have a wide range of uses in a number of medical systems,” it specified.

Moungi Bawendi is a Tunisian-American chemist, born in 1961 in Paris. He is the Lester Wolfe Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is one of the original participants in the field of colloidal quantum dot research, and among the most cited chemists of the last decade.

Bawendi became a Clarivate Citation Laureate in 2020. He received his A.B. in 1982 from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1988 from the University of Chicago. This was followed by two years of postdoctoral research at Bell Laboratories, working with Dr. Louis Brus, where he began his studies on nanomaterials. Bawendi joined the faculty at MIT in 1990, becoming Associate Professor in 1995 and Professor in 1996.

He has followed an interdisciplinary research program that aims at probing the science and developing the technology of chemically synthesised nanocrystals and other nanostructures.

This work has included: (1) the development of novel methods for synthesising, characterising, and processing quantum dots, magnetic nanoparticles, and tubular J-aggregates as novel materials building blocks, (2) studying fundamental optical and magnetic properties of nanostructures using a variety of spectroscopic methods, including the development of optical photon correlation tools to study single nanoscopic emitters, (3) incorporating quantum dots and magnetic particles into various optical and electronic device structures, and (4) developing nanoparticles and other agents for biomedical imaging.

In addition, Professor Bawendi has translated knowledge gained in his lab to the marketplace and to the clinic.

(TAP)