​​​​Maha Alamoudi, a Ph.D. student in the University’s Solar Center who is supervised by Frederic Laquai, associate professor of material science and engineering, won a best poster award at the 2016 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting & Exhibit in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., for her poster entitled “Photophysical Processes in Polymer:Non-fullerene Small Molecule Acceptor Bulk Heterojunctions for Organic Solar Cells.”

Alamoudi completed her master’s degree at KAUST in materials science and engineering in 2014 and began her Ph.D. as a Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC)-funded student in Laquai’s Ultrafast Dynamics Group in 2015. She also served as president of the University’s MRS Student Chapter from 2014 to 2015.

“This was the first time I had a poster presentation at an international conference, so it was very special for me to win the award, as it came quite unexpectedly,” Alamoudi said. “I am grateful for support from my colleague and KAUST postdoctoral fellow Jafar Iqbal Khan and from Professor Laquai. The recognition of my work provides me with a lot of motivation for the remainder of my Ph.D. studies and gives me confidence for my ongoing research projects.”

Laquai added, “I am very excited and proud of Maha for winning the poster prize. It is a great honor for her, the KAUST Solar Center, the University’s materials science and engineering program and for KAUST in general. Maha’s award comes at a time where she is about to wrap up a major piece of research work, and it recognizes the importance of her findings. I am convinced it is a great motivation for her and our researchers to intensify the efforts towards developing a more precise picture of the physics behind energy conversion in novel photovoltaic materials.”

- By Caitlin Clark, KAUST News​