Saw Wai Hla
Dr. Saw Wai Hla is a Professor of Physics and Director of Nanoscale Quantum Phenomena Institute at Ohio University. Dr. Hla is also a scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), has spent his career pushing the limits of how scientists see and control matter at its most fundamental level.
He has served as a director of the Condensed Matter and Surface Program at Ohio University (2015-2018) and as a group leader of the Electronic and Magnetic Materials and Devices Group (2011-2015) and Quantum and Energy Materials Group (2016-2019) in the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National laboratory. He received B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc. in physics from Yangon University, Myanmar in 1990, a DICTP (MS equivalent) in condensed matter theory from ICTP, Trieste, Italy in 1993, and a Ph.D. in experimental physics from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1997.
After postdoctoral appointments at the TASC-INFM/ELETTRA synchrotron lab in Trieste, Italy (1997-1998), and Freie University and Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics, Berlin, in Germany (1998-2001), Dr. Hla joined Ohio University as an assistant professor of physics in 2001. In 2005, Dr. Hla was promoted to associate professor with tenure and in 2011 to full professor. Dr. Hla also has been a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany (Roland Wiesendanger group, 2008-2009) and in the Department of Chemistry at the Universite Paul Sabatier in France (2010) during his sabbatical periods. He is a world-leading researcher in the field of atomic and molecular manipulation using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and synchrotron x-ray studies of individual atoms. His research focuses on nano and quantum properties of molecular machines, rare-earth molecular systems as well as atomic-scale studies of friction and out-of-equilibrium systems.
He has received a Transformative Faculty award (2010), and the Presidential Research Scholar award (2025) from Ohio University, the Sam Bader award for exceptional research achievements (2017) and an Impact Argonne award (2023) from Argonne National Laboratory, the Science Breakthrough of the Year 2024 Laureate Award for Physical Sciences from Falling Walls Foundation, Germany, for breaking the wall of 128-year X-ray history, and the 2024 Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology from the Foresight Institute for excellence in nanoscience experimentation.