Professor Cherie Kagan named 2025 IEEE Fellow

IMOD faculty member honored by world’s largest technical professional organization

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has elected Cherie Kagan as one of its 2025 Fellows. Kagan is the Stephen J. Angello Professor of Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), with additional appointments in Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering. She is a faculty member of the Center for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand (IMOD), a National Science Foundation Science & Technology Center.

The title of IEEE Fellow is a prestigious recognition that is conferred upon IEEE Senior Members with exceptional records of accomplishments in fields of interest to IEEE, with a limit of no more than 0.1% of the voting membership being honored each year. Kagan was honored for her contributions in colloidal nanocrystals and their integration in optical and optoelectronic devices.

Within IMOD, Kagan leads the Heterointegration Research Thrust (RT-2), which focuses on using sophisticated equipment and techniques to place and pattern new optoelectronic materials with exquisite levels of precision, enabling the building of new device architectures. Members of the RT-2 team also investigate how these new materials interact with their surroundings, exploring the behavior of the excitons, spins, and charges within and across the interfaces of these new materials.

At Penn, the Kagan group researches the chemical and physical properties of nanostructured materials and the integration of materials with optical, electrical, magnetic, mechanical, and thermal properties for (multi-)functional devices. They combine the flexibility of chemistry and bottom-up assembly with top-down fabrication techniques to design materials and devices. As well, they explore the properties of materials and measure the characteristics of devices using spatially- and temporally-resolved optical spectroscopies, AC and DC electrical techniques, electrochemistry, scanning probe and electron microscopies, and analytical measurements.

Since joining the Penn faculty in 2007, Kagan has made lasting contributions to both academia and industry. Her research has led to innovative developments in charge and excitonic transport mechanisms in molecular and nanoscale materials and their use in devices, with direct applications in a wide range of cutting-edge technologies. She is a 2024 Materials Research Society Fellow, 2022 Optica Fellow, 2021 National Academy of Inventors Fellow, and 2013 American Physical Society Fellow. In 2024, she received a prestigious Humboldt Research Award as well as the 2024–25 George H. Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, which recognizes a Penn Engineering faculty member whose work is scientifically meritorious and has high technological impact and visibility.

Her other honors include giving Stanford University’s Distinguished Women in Science Colloquium (2009), receiving IBM’s Outstanding Technical Achievement award (2005), selection by the American Chemical Society as one of 12 Outstanding Young Woman Scientists who is expected to make a substantial impact in chemistry during this century (2002), being featured by the American Physical Society in Physics in Your Future (2002), and being named to the MIT Technology Review TR10 (2000).

Adapted from an article published by the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science.