Argonne Distinguished Fellow Linda Young to receive honorary doctorate

The honor recognizes Young’s contributions to nonlinear X-ray science.

Distinguished Fellow Linda Young of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden.

The honorary doctorate recognizes Young’s work in nonlinear X-ray physics. An Uppsala University press release announcing newly appointed honorary doctors highlighted Young’s outstanding accomplishments: ​“She is driving the development of experiments dedicated to mapping electron and nuclear dynamics using intense ultrashort X-ray pulses. Young has collaborated with Uppsala researchers in the fields of basic atomic and molecular physics and ultrafast chemical dynamics, as well as in the field of free-electron laser-based imaging of biomolecules.”

“It has been a real privilege to explore new scientific frontiers with the world’s most powerful X-ray lasers” — Argonne Distinguished Fellow Linda Young

“It has been a real privilege to explore new scientific frontiers with the world’s most powerful X-ray lasers,” said Young, a group leader in Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division. ​“I’d like to thank the Argonne Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics group, past and present, for joining me in these scientific adventures, adding complementary expertise to my native curiosity.”

“These include Robin Santra, Steve Southworth, Gilles Doumy, Phay Ho, Anne Marie March, Elliot Kanter, Bertold Kraessig, Bob Dunford and our superb postdocs and students,” she said. ​“Collaborators from around the world are integral to this type of exploratory research at large facilities, which provides opportunities for close engagement with diverse ideas and views. A special note of thanks goes to the late Gopal Shenoy of the Advanced Photon Source who corralled me into dreaming up first experiments for the then-proposed X-ray free electron laser at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center a decade before its realization as the Linac Coherent Light Source in 2009.”

Young’s current research interests include fundamental interactions of intense X-rays with matter, nonlinear X-ray spectroscopy and coherent ultrafast X-ray probes of nonequilibrium systems. She serves on the scientific advisory boards of many research centers with large-scale light source facilities and has served as the Director of the X-ray Science Division of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) and the chair of the Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics of the American Physical Society.

Young will present lectures at Uppsala University on Jan. 26 and 31. The conferment ceremony will be held on Jan. 27.

The APS is a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.