User:Hqdoan/Tanja Cuk

Tanja Cuk is a chemist at the Department of Chemistry, University of California - Berkeley. Her group studies heterogeneous catalysis using advanced spectroscopic methods for furthering understanding of artificial photosynthesis and solar energy conversion.

Biography
Tanja received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering/ Applied Physics at Princeton University in 2000. She completed her Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Stanford University in 2007 with physicist Zhi-Xun Shen. Her thesis was on solid transition metal oxide materials and their superconducting properties. Afterwards, she became a Miller Research Fellow and worked with Heinz Frei at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), studying artificial photosynthesis. After finishing her postdoctoral fellowship in 2010, she was hired as an assistant professor of chemistry, holding a joint appointment between UC Berkeley and LBNL.

Awards

 * National Science Foundation Fellowship
 * Charles Ira Young Memorial Tablet and Medal
 * Miller Research Fellow

Personal Life
Tanja was born in Huntington Beach, CA. She is the oldest of two girls to parents of electrical engineers. Her mother worked for Hughes Aerospace and her father is a California Institute of Technology professor.