SLAC’s Stefan Mannsfield wins Spicer award

August 18th, 2011

STEFAN MANNSFELD, a staff scientist at SLAC, has been named the winner of the 2011 William E. and Diane M. Spicer Young Investigator Award.

The award honors a young researcher whose work has benefitted from – or is beneficial to – either the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource or the worldwide synchrotron community. It is open to senior graduate students and those who are seven or fewer years into their professional scientific careers.

“I am very surprised and deeply honored to receive this award,” Mannsfeld said. “I had such a big smile on my face when I came home that my wife knew right away that something good had happened.”

Mannsfeld has worked at Stanford and SLAC since receiving his doctorate in physics in 2005 from Germany’s Technical University in Dresden. Initially a postdoctoral fellow in Stanford’s Chemical Engineering Department with ZHENAN BAO, associate professor of chemical engineering, Mannsfeld quickly impressed his professor and colleagues with his physics insights and creative experimental skills. Those skills have led to a series of important insights into the properties of thin-film organic electronic materials.

“He came up with many innovative ideas that took my group to several new directions,” said Bao, “He is the kind of person who will come up with good ideas regardless of the subject he works on and carry those projects from concept to completion. Dr. Mannsfeld is the most creative and solid young scientist I have encountered in the past 10 years.”

Read the full announcement on the SLAC Today website.