Ilke Arslan is a Turkish American

microscopist Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view objects and areas of objects that cannot be seen with the naked eye (objects that are not within the resolution range of the normal eye). There are three well-known branches of micr ...

who is Director of the Center for Nanoscale Materials and the Nanoscience and Technology division at Argonne National Laboratory. She was awarded the

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The White ...

in 2010 and appointed to the Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program in 2020.

Early life and education

Arslanis is the daughter of diplomats. She grew up travelling between

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

. She was an undergraduate student at the

University of Illinois Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois sy ...

, initially on a pre-med track. She could not handle dissections, so instead switched to physics, with a minor in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

. She spent several years of her undergraduate study studying in

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. Arslan holds a doctorate in physics from the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

. Arslan was supported by the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

and the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

. She eventually moved to the

Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Bas ...

, where she worked as a Truman Fellow. Her work considered nano materials for energy and hydrogen storage. She worked on

electron tomography Electron tomography (ET) is a tomography technique for obtaining detailed 3D structures of sub-cellular, macro-molecular, or materials specimens. Electron tomography is an extension of traditional transmission electron microscopy and uses a trans ...

, which she believed could help elucidate structure-property-activity relationships.

Research and career

In 2008, Arslan joined the faculty at the University of California, Davis. After meeting

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

at the ceremony for the

in 2010, she became increasingly interested in science policy. She was appointed a senior scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 2011, where she investigated the morphological changes that occur when zeolites are used in

Fischer–Tropsch process The Fischer–Tropsch process is a collection of chemical reactions that converts a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, known as syngas, into liquid hydrocarbons. These reactions occur in the presence of metal catalysts, typically at temperatu ...

es. In particular, she explored how the distribution of cobalt changes as materials are reduced. She showed that some cobalt can move several nanometers onto the outside of the alumina support. In 2017, Arslan joined the Argonne National Laboratory. Her first job involved working as a group leader in electron microscopy, with a particular focus on 3D ''in situ'' imaging. She was made Director of the Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Awards and honors

* 2010

* 2018 National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellowship * 2018 Strategic Laboratory Leadership Program * 2019 Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arslan, Ilke Living people University of California, Davis alumni University of Illinois Chicago alumni Argonne National Laboratory people American academics of Turkish descent Sandia National Laboratories people Microscopists University of California, Davis faculty 21st-century American scientists 21st-century American women scientists Year of birth missing (living people)