Dr. Ufuk Kiliç, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, received the 2025 Paul Drude Award at the 10th International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (ICSE), sponsored by AIP Publishing, in June 2025. The Paul Drude Award is announced annually at the ICSE, honoring a young scientist for their exceptional contributions to the development and application of spectroscopic ellipsometry.
The award recognized Kilic for “the achievement of having demonstrated and determined unambiguous structural and optical relationships for chiral and achiral nanostructured metamaterials using computational engineering, nanostructure material preparation, and spectroscopic ellipsometry.”
“I’m thrilled and deeply honored to have been selected as the recipient of the Paul Drude Award,” said Kilic. “I’m sincerely grateful to the sponsors, organizers, and the ICSE-10 awards committee for this recognition—it marks a meaningful milestone in my career.” He added “heartfelt thanks to Prof. Mathias Schubert, Prof. Eva Schubert, and Prof. Christos Argyropoulos for their invaluable guidance and support throughout this journey.
Kilic praised funders supporting the Emergent Quantum Materials and Technologies (EQUATE) collaboration—"enabling our research at the forefront of nanophotonics and optics.” He also acknowledged J.A. Woollam Company for its longstanding commitment to supporting EQUATE’s work. In addition, Kilic expressed gratitude for the collective dedication, effort, and perseverance of all past and present team members (http://ellipsometry.unl.edu), collaborators, mentors, and “my incredibly supportive family.”
Kilic’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through EPSCoR RII Track-1: Emergent Quantum Materials and Technologies (EQUATE) Award OIA-2044049, NSF-CMMI 2211858, NSF-DMR 2224456, NSF-ECCS 2329940, Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) FA9550-19-S0003 (M.S.), FA9550-21-1-0259 , and FA9550-23-1-0574 DEF, the University of Nebraska Foundation, and the J.A. Woollam Foundation.
