Oliver Gessner

Oliver Gessner, PhD
Senior Scientist

Chemical Sciences Division

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

One Cyclotron Road, M/S 2-100

Berkeley, CA-94720

Phone: (510) 486-6929

Fax: (510) 486-7043

E-mail: ogessner@lbl.gov

https://gessnerresearchgroup.lbl.gov

Positions Held

·  Leader of the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences (AMOS) Program, Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, since 2019

·  Senior Scientist, Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, since 2011

·  Divisional Fellow, Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, 2006 – 2011

·  Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry Department, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 2006

·  Assistant Research Officer, Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences Group, Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 2005 – 2006

·  Canadian Government Laboratory Visiting Fellow, Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences Group, Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 2002 –2005

 

Honors

·  Member, Committee on Atomic Molecular and Optical Sciences (CAMOS), The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – 2024

·  Elected chair-line member of the American Physical Society Division of Chemical Physics (DCP) – 2023

·  Fellow of the American Physical Society – 2015

·  LBNL Director’s Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement – 2014

·  Early Career Research Program Award of the DOE Office of Science – 2012

·  Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences Annual Award for Scientific Breakthrough and Technical Innovation – 2005

·  NSERC Visiting Fellowship in Canadian Government Laboratories – 2002.

 

Invited Talks & Lectures (since 2018, selected)

·  14th Ringberg Workshop: Science with FELs, Kreuth, Germany (2025)

·  Condensed Matter Physics Seminar, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook NY (2024).

·  Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences Committee (BESAC) Fall Meeting (2024).

·  Gordon Research Conference on Multiphoton Processes, Smithfield RI (2024).

·  ALS Photon Science Seminar, Advanced Light Source, Berkeley CA (2024).

·  LCLS User Meeting, SLAC, Menlo Park CA (2023).

·  Department of Physics Colloquium, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH (2023).

·  Stanford/SLAC Data Science Seminar (2023).

·  Chemical Dynamics at Extended Scales Symposium, Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin, Germany (2023).

·  241st Electrochemical Society (ECS) Meeting, Vancouver BC, Canada (2022).

·  ACS Spring 2022 National Meeting, San Diego CA (2022).

·  ALS Tender Scattering Science Workshop, Advanced Light Source (2021).

·  Colloquium of the Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory (2021).

·  Physics Colloquium, Innsbruck University (2021).

·  Future Positioning of BESSY III – Chemical kinetics with high throughput Workshop (2020).

·  PRiME Meeting of The Electrochemical Society (ECS) (2020).

·  Chemistry & Chemical Biology Colloquium at the University of California, Merced CA (2020).

·  Physical Chemistry/Chemical Physics Colloquium at the University of Colorado, Boulder CO (2020).

·  Applications of X-ray Lasers to Gas Phase Chemical Physics Research Workshop, SLAC, Menlo Park CA (2020).

·  Gordon Research Conference on Molecular and Ionic Clusters, Ventura CA (2020).

·  236th Electrochemical Society (ECS) Meeting, Atlanta GA (2019).

·  Beating the Complexity of Matter through the Selectivity of X-rays - Dynamic Pathways in Multidimensional Landscapes (SXR 2019), Berlin, Germany (2019).

·  Conference on Quantum Fluid Clusters (QFC), Bad Honnef, Germany (2019).

·  New Scientific Capabilities at European XFEL Workshop, Hamburg, Germany (2019)

·  Photon Tools for Physical Chemistry (PTPC), Beatenberg, Switzerland (2019).

·  14th International Conference on Electronic Structure and Spectroscopy (ICESS), Shanghai, China (2018).

·  Gordon Research Conference on Multiphoton Processes, Smithfield RI (2018).

·  ASU Compact X-ray Free Electron Laser Workshop, Tempe AZ (2018).

 

Other Professional Activities

·  Member, Committee on Atomic Molecular and Optical Sciences (CAMOS), The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2024-2025).

·  Chair-line, American Physical Society - Division of Chemical Physics (DCP) (2024-2028).

·  Editorial Board, Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (2019-present).

·  Scientific program committee member, International Conference on Electronic Spectroscopy and Structure (ICESS), Berkeley (2025).

·  Science Proposal and Technical Design Team Member, Arizona State University - Compact X-ray Free Electron Laser (ASU-CXFEL) (2019-present).

·  LCLS-II AMO Instrument Advisory Panel (2016-present).

·  Panel lead and report co-author, National Extreme Ultrafast Science Facility (NeXUS) User Workshop (2022).

·  Committee member, American Physical Society Deborah Jin Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular, or Optical Physics (2018-2019).

·  Panel lead and report co-author, Department of Energy Roundtable on XFEL Ultrafast Science (2017).

·  Chair, American Physical Society Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (APS-DAMOP) Annual Meeting Program Subcommittee on Light Source and Ultrafast Laser Science (2014-2016).

·  Co-chair, Soft X-ray in Energy and Time (SXET) Workshop, Berlin (2015).

·  Co-chair, Physical Chemistry Symposium, 44th Western Regional ACS Meeting, Santa Clara CA (2013).

·  Guest editor, Chemical Physics - Special Issue: Attosecond spectroscopy (2013).

·  Co-chair, Workshop on time-resolved science at the ALS, Advanced Light Source Users’ Meeting, Berkeley CA (2011).

·  Co-chair, Focus Session on ultrafast dynamics & imaging and Langmuir Prize Session at APS March Meeting, Dallas TX (2011).

·  Chair, “The Future of Ultrafast Soft X-ray Science” workshop, Berkeley CA (2009).

·  Reviewer for the Department of Energy (DOE), National Science Foundation (NSF), European Research Council (ERC), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Advanced Light Source (ALS), Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), Science, Phys. Rev. Lett., Phys. Rev. A, Nat. Phys., J. Chem. Phys., JACS, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., J. Phys. Chem. A, PCCP, Chem. Phys., J. Phys. B, Struct. Dyn., Chem. Phys. Chem., Sci. Rep., J. Med. Imaging, New J. Phys., Rev. Sci. Instrum.

 

Education   

Ph.D. – (Physics), Technische Universität Berlin and Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-

         Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany, 2002.

M.S.  – (Diplom, Physics), Technische Universität Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, and

         Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany, 1996.

B.S.  – (Vordiplom, Physics), Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, 1991.

 

Graduate and Postdoctoral Advisors:

Prof. Uwe Becker, Graduate Advisor, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany.

Prof. Albert Stolow, Postdoctoral Advisor, Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences, Ottawa, Canada.

 

Publications