Naomi Ginsberg

Professor of Chemistry 

Naomi Ginsberg earned her B.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 2000 before pursuing doctoral studies at Harvard University, where she received her Ph.D. in 2007. She then served as a Glenn T. Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2007 to 2010. In 2010, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has since held numerous distinguished appointments and honors, including the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. She is also widely recognized for her excellence in teaching and mentorship, receiving multiple UC Berkeley teaching awards and the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize, as well as being named a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

At UC Berkeley, Ginsberg leads a research group at the intersection of physical and biophysical chemistry, focusing on in situ imaging and spectroscopy of emerging materials. Her work centers on understanding hierarchical materials—complex systems composed of molecules or nanoparticles that assemble into structures with multiple levels of organization and diverse bonding interactions. These materials, which include semiconductors, biological assemblies, and metal-organic frameworks, exhibit rich and often unexplored phase behavior and emergent properties.

The Ginsberg Group investigates how these materials form, how their structures evolve, and how their unique architectures give rise to novel physical properties such as energy transport and electronic behavior. By examining systems that are often far from equilibrium, her research uncovers how local structural variations and interactions across different length scales influence material function.

To address these questions, her group develops and applies advanced experimental techniques to track nanoscale dynamics in real time. These include in situ electron and X-ray scattering methods, as well as ultrafast optical microscopy that resolves energy transport with high spatial and temporal precision. Through these approaches, Ginsberg’s work provides fundamental insights into next-generation materials such as metal halide perovskites, organic semiconductors, covalent organic frameworks, 2D materials, and nanocrystal assemblies, with applications spanning energy conversion, quantum materials, and biomimetic light harvesting.