Francesca Calegari received the ICO prize of the International Commission for Optics

Francesca Calegari, lead scientist at DESY and Professor at the University of Hamburg, has been recently awarded the prestigious ICO Prize 2017 of the International Commission for Optics (ICO) “for her innovative and pioneering research on the generation of isolated XUV attosecond pulses at the nJ-energy level and their application to the study of the electron dynamics in complex molecules”.

The ICO Prize is awarded each year to an individual who has made a noteworthy contribution to optics, published submitted for publication before he or she has reached the age of 40. The contribution must have a high impact - past or possibly in future - on the field of optics generally, opening a subfield or significantly expanding an established subfield in research or technology.

DESY's Research Director for Photon Science, Edgar Weckert, congratulates Francesca Calegari for being awarded: "The prize shows the signifiance of her work in the field of attosecond science, which she already started at the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies (IFN-CNR, Milano, Italy) and which she will continue at DESY with powerful optical laser driven sources and at FELs."