Sara Bals (born 1977) is a Belgian nanoscientist known for her research 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 ...

and its application in the study of

nanomaterials Nanomaterials describe, in principle, chemical substances or materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale). Nanomaterials research takes a materials science ...

such as perovskite nanocrystals. She is a professor of

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

for

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

at the

University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp () is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UAntwerp''. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 students, which makes it the third-largest university in Flanders. ...

Education and career

Bals was born 25 August 1977 in Antwerp. She was educated in physics at the University of Antwerp, earning a master's degree in 1999 and completing her Ph.D. there in 2003. Her dissertation was ''Optimisation of superconducting thin films and tapes by transmission electron microscopy''. After postdoctoral research in the National Center for Electron Microscopy at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

and at the University of Antwerp, she became an assistant professor at the University of Antwerp in 2007. She was promoted to associate professor in 2012 and full professor in 2018.

Recognition

Bals was elected to the

Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (, , abbr. KVAB) is an independent learned society of science and arts of the Flemish Community in Belgium. It is one of Belgium's numerous academies and traces its origin to 1772 when ...

in 2019. In 2020 she was the winner of the JEOL-EM Award for Physical/Materials Sciences and Optics, given quadrennially by the European Microscopy Society. The award cited "her outstanding achievements in the field of 3D electron tomography", "combining state-of-the-art electron microscopy with advanced reconstruction algorithms".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bals, Sara 1977 births Living people Scientists from Antwerp Belgian women scientists Microscopists Nanotechnologists Academic staff of the University of Antwerp