2019 Award

    The Coblentz Society will present the 2019 Coblentz Award to Dr. Aleksandra Foltynowicz at the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS) in June 2019. 

     Aleksandra Foltynowicz studied physics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, and Umeå University, Sweden; she received her MSc in 2005. In 2009 she completed her Ph.D. in ultrasensitive cavity-enhanced molecular absorption spectroscopy under the supervision of Prof. Ove Axner at Umeå University. Afterwards she spent two years at JILA, University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, USA, as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Jun Ye. In 2012 she was appointed as assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Umeå University, and in 2018 she was promoted to associate professor. She is married and has two daughters, born 2015 and 2018.

     The research of Dr. Foltynowicz focuses on optical frequency comb spectroscopy for broadband precision measurements and multispecies trace gas detection. Her group develops new methods of near- and mid-infrared direct and cavity-enhanced comb spectroscopy, pushing the limits of sensitivity, resolution and accuracy of the technique. She collaborates with many international and national partners. Her group pioneered a method of comb-based Fourier transform spectroscopy that overcomes the nominal resolution limit and enables acquisition of broadband spectra with kHz resolution. Her laboratory was the first to demonstrate comb-based photoacoustic spectroscopy, Faraday rotation spectroscopy, cavity-enhanced complex refractive index spectroscopy, and NICE-OHMS.

     The contributions of Dr. Foltynowicz to science have been recognized by many awards and grants, including the Coblentz Award (2019), Peter Werle Early Career Scientist Award (2016), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation Academy Fellow (2015), Royal Skyttean Society Award (2015), Swedish Research Council Project Grants (2013, 2017), and Ingvar Carlsson Award from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (2013).