Nora Berrah

Nora Berrah is an American-Algerian Physicist at the University of Connecticut’s physics department and an International Blaise-Pascal Chair d'Excellence from the Region Ile-de-France.

Research Interests. Berrah’s research interests are in the investigation of the interaction of molecules and extended systems with weak and strong electromagnetic fields produced by various light sources. Recent research interests are in the areas of non-linear physics, quantum control and time resolved studies of molecules with emphasis on long and short wavelength radiation, ultrafast time scales and strong laser fields. The current research involves the use of intense femtosecond and attosecond pulses from HHG and free electron lasers (FEL) in the vuv and x-ray regimes to probe physical and chemical processes that happen on ultrafast time scales.

Awards and Honors. Over the course of her career, Berrah received the Honorary Doctoral Degree in Physics from the University of Turku, Finland in 2021 and the Blaise Pascal Chair d’Excellence for Ultrafast Science at the Commissariat à l’énergie Atomique, Saclay, France in 2019. She was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 and was awarded the 2014 Davisson-Germer Prize from the American Physical Society and the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs’ David. S. Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievements in 2002. She received the Western Michigan University Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award in 2000 and became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999. She was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship, from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1992 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Education and Professional Position. Berrah received the Diplôme d ’etude Supérieur in 1979 from the University of Bab-Ezzouar in Theoretical Physics, in Algiers, Algeria and her Ph.D. in Physics in 1987 from the University of Virginia. She was Postdoctoral appointee in 1987 and Assistant Scientist in 1989 at the Physics Division of Argonne National Laboratory. She joined the tenured faculty at the Physics Department of Western Michigan University in 1991 and had several sabbaticals as a visiting professor at the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max Planck Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany in1992, was a visiting Scientist at the LURE (Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation du Rayonnement Electronique) in Orsay, France in 1993, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley in 1998, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) at Stanford in CA in 2006. She received a Chair d’Excellence from the SOLEIL French National Synchrotron Laboratory at St. Aubin in France in 2011 and was a visiting Professor at the University of Paris VI in France. Berrah joined the tenured faculty as the Head of the physics department of the University of Connecticut in 2014. She was a visiting Professor at Stanford University and the PULSE Institute at SLAC National Labs in 2020 and a Blaise Pascal Visiting Professor at the CEA in 2021.

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