Prize Recipient

Marjorie Ann Olmstead
University of Washington

"For her innovative application of electron spectroscopies to surfaces and interfaces that has elucidated the importance of interfacial reactions on the structure, properties and morphology of both the interface and growing film in systems involving dissimilar materials, especially when heteroepitaxy is involved."

Marjorie Olmstead's primary research effort probes the chemical, structural, and kinetic constraints controlling the heteroepitaxy of strongly disparate materials. She also studies the role of local geometry and electronic structure on photoelectron energies and satellite excitations in insulators. Her photoelectron spectroscopy and diffraction experiments investigating ionic crystal growth on semiconductor surfaces showed the importance of interfacial reactions, lattice mismatch, and the competition among nucleation pathways in determining the structure and morphology of a heteroepitaxial film.

Dr. Olmstead is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Washington, Seattle. She received her B.A. (1979 from Swathmore College, and her M.A. (1982) and Ph. D (1985) from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation probed the interrelated optical and structural properties of Si and Ge surfaces. After a year and a half at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, she returned to Berkeley as an Assistant Professor of Physics in 1986. She joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 1991.

Prof. Olmstead received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1987, and an IBM Faculty Development Award in 1986. In 1994, she was awarded the Peter Mark Memorial Award and elected fellow by the American Vacuum Society.