Ursula Keller, a Swiss scientist, obtained a Master’s degree in applied physics at Stanford University, in the USA, in 1989. Nowadays, she is a distinguished physics professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). Ursula is the first woman who obtained the post of professor of physics at that university. She has won many prestigious awards for her research, primarily aimed at ultrafast laser technology.
Her research interests are exploring and pushing the frontiers in ultrafast science and technology. She invented the semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) which enabled passive modelocking of diode-pumped solid-state lasers and established ultrafast solid-state lasers for science and industrial applications.
From 1989 to 1993, Ursula worked at the AT&T research centre in New Jersey. She was a guest professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Lund Institute of technology, in Sweden. She is a cofounder of Time-Bandwidth Products, a provider of high-powered and ultrafast lasers, and GigaTera, a telecommunications company.
Ursula Keller has won numerous prestigious awards for her research, including the IEEE Edison Medal, European Inventor Award (2018), as well as Charles H. Townes Award and Arthur L. Schawlow Award. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Academia Leopoldina, the German National academy of Sciences and the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences. Recently, she was elected International Councilor of the American Physical Society.