Thuc Quyen Nguyen
Nguyen was born and grew up during the final years of the Vietnam War. Her house was burned down during the war and her family lost everything. Nguyen and her siblings grew up in small villages in Vietnam without electricity for 16 years and they lacked of basic needs such as foods, clothes, drinking water, etc. As a child, she dreamed of capturing sunlight in a glass jar to study at night. She immigrated to the United States (US) at the age of 21 years old with a few words of English. She faced discrimination for being a poor immigrant. The more challenges she faced, the harder she tried. She used every setback and hurdle as a motivation to move forward. Within 10 years arriving to the US, Nguyen got a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in Physical Chemistry under the guidance of Professor Benjamin Schwartz.
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From 2001-2004, she was a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working with 2023 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Louis Brus and Professor Colin Nuckolls on molecular self-assembly, nanoscale characterization and devices. She also spent time at IBM Research Center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Dr. Richard Martel and Dr. Phaedon Avouris on molecular electronics. She joined the faculty of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at UCSB in 2004.
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Currently, Nguyen is the Director of the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Her research interests are organic semiconductors, bioelectronics, device physics of organic photovoltaics, transistors, and photodetectors, sensors, and sustainability. She is co-authored over 315 publications and 3 book chapters that received over 41,000 citations (H-index: 103) and gave over 350 plenary/keynote/invited talks at national and international conferences, universities, and companies.
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Recognition for her research includes:
2025: American Chemical Society Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry
2025: French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) Ambassador in Chemical Sciences
2025: Suffrage Science Award
2024: Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc)
2023: De Gennes Prize for Materials Chemistry from Royal Society of Chemistry
2023: Elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering
2023: Wilhelm Exner Medal
2023: Fellow of the United States National Academy of Inventors
2021, 2022: Women in Materials Science by Advanced Materials
2020: Present The Stanford University's List of the World Top 2% Highly Cited Scientists
2020: UCSB Outstanding Graduate Student Mentor Award
2019: Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2015 – 2019: The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds; Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Cross-Field (2019) and in Materials Science (2015-2018) by Clarivate Analytics and Thomson Reuters
2019: Hall of Fame, Advanced Materials
2019: Beaufort Visiting Scholar, St John’s College, Cambridge University
2017: Vietnamese Creative Gold Book (Sách Vàng Sáng Tạo Việt Nam)
2016: Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry
2015: Humboldt Research Award for Senior Scientists
2010: National Science Foundation (NSF) American Competitiveness and Innovation (ACI) Fellows
2009: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow
2008: Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award
2007: Harold J. Plous Memorial Award and Lectureship, one of the UCSB's two most prestigious faculty honors.
2006: NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award
2005: Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award
