Award Sumea

“Austrian role model” award goes to Sumea Klokic



“Austrian role model” award goes to Sumea Klokic

Sumea Klokic, CERIC post-doc scientist at Elettra and the partner facility at the University of Technology in Graz (Austria), has received the “Austrian Role Model” prize for her achievements as a female scientist.

The award, established by the LEA organisation, aims at selecting outstanding Austrian women to serve as ‘role models’ for children and girls in order to motivate them to take up the challenge and enter in traditionally ‘men-dominated’ jobs. On April 26th, 2023, the prize ceremony was held in Vienna with the award given by the Austrian Federal Minister for Women and Integration Susanne Raab.

How did she achieve such an important milestone? Sumea studied Chemistry on the bachelor and master’s level at the Technical University of Graz, where she further received the engineering degree in the master’s program Technical Chemistry and the PhD in Natural Science within Chemistry. She has received several awards during her studies, such as the prestigious Otto-Vogl award by the ÖAW for her master’s thesis in 2020. During this articulated course of studies, her focus moved from inorganic synthetic chemistry to renewable resources towards physical chemistry, which paved the way for her research she is currently pursuing at the Austrian SAXS beamline at Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste.

Her current research involves the study of solid systems that are responsive towards light: in particular, she studies structural dynamics within photo-responsive solid-state systems, which are attractive candidates to be applicable for energy-storage. Here, she uses Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) films – which structure responds reversibly within seconds when triggered by light in the visible range as successfully shown during her PhD thesis– as model systems that comprise both organic and inorganic components. Such systems could be implemented as energy-storage elements in modern devices. Tracking MOF films response requires the use of synchrotron light, and that’s why Sumea in her studies uses particularly X-rays (Austrian SAXS beamline)) or infrared light (SISSI-BOFFline) to deduce the dynamic behaviour of the photo-response.


 

 

Figure 1. On April 26th, 2023, the award ceremony was held in Vienna with the prize given by the Austrian Federal Minister for Women and Integration Susanne Raab.

 

 





Last Updated on Wednesday, 31 May 2023 11:00