Awards and Honors
List of Awards and Honors (Prof. Ndukaife):
2023 Best and Brightest: Office of Naval Research (ONR) 2024 Young Investigator Award
2023 NIH R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Award (MIRA) for Outstanding Investigators at NIGMS
2023 Optica Kaminow Outstanding Early Career Professional Prize
2023 SPIE Senior Membership
2023 IEEE Senior Membership
2023 Optica Senior Membership
2023 Named Nanoscale Emerging Investigator in Nanotechnology and Nanoscience
2022 NSF CAREER Award
2022 Outstanding Reviewer Award for Nature’s Light Science and Applications
2022 Member of Vanderbilt University Faculty Research Awards Committee
2021 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research
(among five faculty members from all ranks selected across Vanderbilt University)
2020 Light Science and Applications Global Rising Stars of Light Award
(a global campaign for the most brilliant young scientists in optics-related field with submissions
from USA, Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Singapore, Switzerland, UK)
2020 Alumni Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Award
2019 Junior Faculty Teaching Fellowship Award
2019 Vanderbilt Provost Research Studios Award
2018 Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Award
2017 The year 2017 Prize in Physics by Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation in recognition of work on
“plasmon nano-optical tweezers” (awarded to the top graduating doctoral candidate at Purdue
University annually)
2016 Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award, College of Engineering, Purdue University
2016 Gordon Research Conference Emerging Topic Talk (Selected out of all participants) GRC on
Plasmonics and Nanophotonics, for talk on “Shaping the Future of Plasmon Nano-Optical
Tweezers”
2016 Elected as Co-chair of 2018 Gordon Research Seminar on Plasmonics and Nanophotonics
2015 Golden Torch Award by National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE): Named “Graduate
Student of the Year”
2015 Best Paper Award at the ASME Society-Wide Micro and Nanotechnology Forum
2016 NSBE Graduate Student Professional Conference Scholarship
2015 NSBE Graduate Student Professional Conference Scholarship
2015 Inducted into the Society of Innovators of Northwest Indiana
2015 Participated at the summer school on Complex Photonics at the international school of Physics
Enrico Fermi in Varenna, Italy
2012 NSBE Board of Corporate Affiliates Scholarship
2011 Member of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society
2005-2009 University of Lagos Endowment Scholarship for maintaining First Class GPA
List of Student Awards and Honors:
2023 Guodong Zhu: Best Paper Award at SPIE Optics and Photonics Conference
2023 Sen Yang: International Young Scientist Fellowship Award
2023 Moreen Habib: 2nd place prize for REHSS research symposium
2022 Sen Yang: Overall Best Paper Award in Interdisciplinary Materials Science Program at
Vanderbilt University
2021 Chuchuan Hong: Overall Best Paper Award in Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and
Engineering
2021 Chuchuan Hong: Overall Best Paper Award across Vanderbilt School of Engineering
2021 Chuchuan Hong: Inaugural C. F. Chen Best Paper Award in Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt
2020 Sen Yang: 3rd place prize, VINSE Nanoday presentation for his poster on “particle-assisted
trapping in symmetry-breaking quasi-BIC system
2018 Rayni Jules: Second place poster award in the NSBE Technical Research Exhibition for his poster
on “frequency-based self-assembly on plasmonic gold metasurfaces