Karen Kavanagh
Karen L. Kavanagh | |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s) | Physicist, Professor |
| Years active | 1978–present |
| Known for | Semiconductor nanoscience, electronic materials science |
Karen L. Kavanagh serves as a professor in the field of physics at Simon Fraser University located in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. She directs the Kavanagh Lab, which is dedicated to research in semiconductor nanoscience.
Education
Kavanagh obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical-Physics from Queen's University in 1978. Subsequently, she spent three years working at the Advanced Technology Laboratory of Bell Northern Research in Ottawa. She earned her doctoral degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell University in 1987.
Career
Following her postdoctoral appointments at both IBM and MIT, Kavanagh became part of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego. In 2000, she transitioned to Simon Fraser University.
Her specialization encompasses electronic materials science, particularly investigating how defects impact the characteristics of semiconductor materials and their device functionalities. Her research has addressed topics such as strain relaxation mechanisms in lattice-mismatched semiconductor heterostructures, diffusion barrier technologies, electrical contact development for silicon and III-V semiconductor devices, as well as epitaxial growth processes, nucleation phenomena, and electron transport across thin films and interfaces. Additionally, she has advanced characterization methodologies including electron microscopy, Rutherford backscattering, x-ray diffraction, and scanning probe microscopy.
Kavanagh holds Fellow status with both the Institute of Physics and the Materials Research Society (since 2022), and has authored over 200 scientific journal articles and conference papers, which are catalogued on ORCID.
Awards
- Vancouver YWCA Women of Distinction Award (2006)
- Recipient of NSERC University Faculty Award (1999)
- Awarded NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award (1991)