The summer 2020 EPS Emmy Noether Distinction is awarded to:

• Hatice Altug

from the Institute for Bioengineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, “for her seminal contributions to light-matter interaction at the nanoscale, manipulation of light on-chip and application of nanophotonics in biology, and her inspiring role for the next generation of researchers and women”.

Prof. Dr. Hatice Altug was born in 1978 in Turkey. She received her bachelor of science in physics from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) in 2000 and her PhD in applied physics from Stanford University (California, U.S.) in 2007. She is currently a full professor at the Bioengineering Department of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, and the director of EPFL’s Doctoral School in Photonics. Prof. Altug is the recipient of the Optical Society of America Adolph Lomb Medal and the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which is the highest honour bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in their early career. She received an ERC Consolidator and Proof-of-Concept grant award, the U.S. Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Massachusetts Life Science Center New Investigator Award, and the IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award. She is the winner of the Inventors’ Challenge competition of Silicon Valley in 2005, and has been named to Popular Science Magazine’s "Brilliant 10" list in 2011.

Hatice Altug is leading the Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory at EPFL, and with her team she is introducing next-generation biosensors, spectroscopy and bioimaging technologies with significant importance for fundamental life sciences, early disease diagnostics, safety and point-of‐care testing. Her laboratory is addressing the key challenges of current bioanalytical tools by developing novel nanodevices that can enable label-free, ultra-sensitive, multiplexed, rapid and real-time measurements on biomolecules, pathogens and living systems.