Kayla Nguyen

Kayla X. Nguyen
Born1989 (age 36–37)
Vietnam
Alma mater
Known forCo-inventor of Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD)
Scientific career
Fields
  • Physics
  • Chemical Physics
Institutions
ThesisNew imaging capabilities for materials enabled by the Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD) (2018)
Doctoral advisorDavid A. Muller

Kayla X. Nguyen (born 1989) is a physicist and assistant professor on the faculty of the University of Oregon. She co-invented the Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD), a camera displaying images at a very high level of detail. Her research involves computational tools and instrumentation to visualize and measure individual atoms.

Early life and education

Kayla Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1989, and was four years old when her family immigrated to the United States from a refugee camp in Thailand.[1] At age nine, she was inspired when she heard Sally Ride speak at an event encouraging "more women and girls to pursue careers in STEM".[1]

As a teen in Southern California, she worked in a skateboard shop, where her customers asked for boards with better features: "..more pop, for example, or better bearings", eventually leading her to "develop an intuition for physics".[1] When she surfed, she took note of "the energy and motion of the waves", building her interest in the way things work.[1]

At the College of Creative Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Nguyen completed a B.S. in physics. Her honors thesis, Electrostatic Force Microscopy on Organic Photovoltaics, was advised by Thuc-Quyen Nguyen.[1]

While a graduate student at Cornell University, Nguyen won the Lemelson–MIT Prize competition as co-inventor of the Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD),[2] a camera that "takes pictures using electrons and can detect and display them at an unprecedented level of detail".[1] She earned a Ph.D. at Cornell with her dissertation, New imaging capabilities for materials enabled by the Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD), advised by David A. Muller.[3]

Career

During her post-doc at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2019–2023, Nguyen was named by The Japan Times as one of "Five pioneering Asian scientists to look out for this year".[4] The article reported, "Nguyen's research has the potential to improve medicine and technology with new treatments for cancer and possible cures for Alzheimer's. It can enhance drug delivery systems, make fuel-cell cars more accessible and quicken computer processing, among other things."[4]

Since 2023, Nguyen has held an assistant professorship in the University of Oregon Department of Physics.[5] Nguyen's research involves physics, materials science and computer science, focusing on the next generation of electron microscope technology, including computational tools and instrumentation to visualize and measure individual atoms. She has said, "When you design detectors, microscopes or new computational frameworks, you're really designing new ways to look at the microscopic world... Once you have the tool, anyone — biologists, chemists, physicists — can use it to ask their own questions."[5]

Honors and awards

Selected publications

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f The Lemelson Foundation (September 8, 2020). "How Building Skateboards Inspired One Young Woman to Become a Prizewinning Inventor and a Role Model for Young Women in STEM". The Lemelson Foundation. Archived from the original on October 1, 2020. Retrieved December 17, 2025.
  2. ^ "UO researcher brings the atomic world into focus using physics - Northwest Quantum". November 20, 2025. Archived from the original on December 18, 2025. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  3. ^ Nguyen, Kayla X. (December 30, 2018). "New imaging capabilities for materials enabled by the Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD)". Archived from the original on July 24, 2024.
  4. ^ a b Jackson, Alex (March 18, 2021). "Five pioneering Asian scientists to look out for this year". The Japan Times. Archived from the original on March 18, 2021. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  5. ^ a b "Physicist Kayla Nguyen earns early career innovation award | Natural Sciences". naturalsciences.uoregon.edu. Archived from the original on December 18, 2025. Retrieved December 15, 2025.
  6. ^ "Maria Goeppert Mayer Award". www.aps.org. Retrieved December 17, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ "Kayla Nguyen". Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. Archived from the original on August 14, 2025. Retrieved December 18, 2025.
  8. ^ "L'Oréal Groupe Videos FWIS: Kayla Nguyen, Electron Microscopist University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign". L'Oréal. Archived from the original on May 23, 2025. Retrieved December 17, 2025.
  9. ^ "Current Class | Illinois Distinguished Postdoctoral Program". illinois.edu. Archived from the original on June 30, 2022. Retrieved December 17, 2025.
  10. ^ "Kayla Nguyen | Lemelson". lemelson.mit.edu. Archived from the original on October 19, 2024. Retrieved December 17, 2025.
  11. ^ "Nguyen Fact Sheet" (PDF). lemelson.mit.edu. 2021. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 18, 2024.
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