Ekaterina Khestanova
I have worked with Katya for 10 years. Aside, from exhibiting technical excellence, her resilience and ability to adapt in any scientific environment she is placed amazes me. During her PhD she thrived finding her own path and defining her own projects leading to several breakthroughs in the field of 2D materials. For her first post-doctoral position she kick-started 2D materials research in an optics group that was completely absent before. In the last 4 years she has been building one of the worlds first terahertz cryogenic near-field scattering microscopes with record low temperatures. This work is truly inspiring, not to mention the fact that she first had to clean up the mess made by her failed predecessors (all men), before finding the correct solution herself which has now given ICFO one of the most specialized and powerful instruments in the world. In fact, it is the only system of its kind in the world and is sure to have significant impact on the SNOM community.
Ekaterina Khestanova has been nominated by
Roshan Krishna Kumar
ICFO PostDoc Reasearcher