Moungi Bawendi

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Moungi Bawendi is the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of three recipients of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. While a postdoctoral researcher in Louis Brus's group at Bell Labs and then as a young faculty member at MIT, Bawendi developed in 1993 the hot-injection method for producing colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals of nearly uniform size with sharp, tunable optical properties, a breakthrough that turned quantum dots from a laboratory phenomenon into a manufacturable material. His monodisperse synthesis underpins the quantum-dot films now used in high-color-gamut televisions and displays, near-infrared fluorescent probes for biological imaging, and emerging photovoltaic and photodetector technologies. Bawendi co-founded QD Vision, a quantum-dot display company later acquired by Samsung, and continues to advise startups commercializing nanocrystal materials for displays, sensing, and medical imaging. His MIT laboratory, supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation, is a heavy user of precision wet-chemistry equipment, spectroscopy and microscopy instrumentation, glovebox and inert-atmosphere systems, and surface-analysis tools, making it a prominent and well-resourced customer in the materials and analytical instrumentation market for vendors selling into nanomaterials research.