- Semiconductors (organic molecular, inorganic, hybrid perovskites, metal oxides)
- Nano-scale effects
- Solar energy conversion
- Charge-carrier dynamics
- Energy-transfer
- Light-harvesting
- Molecular morphology and self-assembly
- Ultrafast spectroscopy
Education:PhD in Physics, 2002, University of Cambridge
Diplom in Physics, First Class, 1999, University of Bonn
Laura Herz is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford where she directs the Semiconductors Group at the Clarendon Laboratory and is the Associate Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division for research. She received her PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge in 2002 and was a Research Fellow at St John's College Cambridge from 2001 – 2003, after which she moved to a faculty position at Oxford Physics. She held an Advanced Fellowship by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council from 2006-2012.
Professor Herz has published over 160 peer-reviewed research articles (>28000 citations, h-index 65 – Google Scholar 2020) and is currently listed by Clarivate Analytics/Web of Science as a Highly Cited Researcher. Recently, she was awarded the Nevill Mott Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics and the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Bessel Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in recognition of her research, and a student-led teaching award, by the Oxford Student Union, in the category "Outstanding Graduate Supervisor".
She is an Associate Editor of Applied Physics Reviews, Chemical Physics Reviews (AIP) and a member of the editorial advisory board for ACS Energy Letters. Prof Herz is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics, and University College Oxford. She currently holds an Honorary Professorship at the Australian National University, and a Hans-Fischer Senior Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study at the Technical University Munich (TUM).