Olivia Krohn
Former JILA graduate student Olivia Krohn was awarded a distinguished fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories. The prestigious fellowship is a three-year appointment that support independent and groundbreaking research.
Krohn was awarded the Jill Hruby Postdoctoral Fellowship, named for the first woman to lead a national security lab. Krohn’s research focuses on molecular collisions, particularly at low energies. Her team employs advanced laser techniques which help control the velocity of molecules and measure the energy distribution after molecules collide.
Krohn completed her PhD in physics at JILA, CU Boulder in 2023 with Professor and JILA Fellow Heather Lewandowski. Her dissertation focused on trapping laser-cooled ions to perform and observe cold chemical reactions. She was also awarded the 2025 Justin Jankunas Doctoral Dissertation Award in Chemical Physics by the American Physical Society.
Written by Kirsten Apodaca, CU Boulder Physics
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.