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 under the supervision of Professor Colin Nuckolls and the Nobel Laureate, Louis Brus. 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.
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, 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), 2023 Wilhelm Exner Medal from Austria, 2023 Fellow of the United States National Academy of Inventors, 2023 de Gennes Prize in Materials Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and 2023 Elected Member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.