Nora Berrah

Nora Berrah is a University of Connecticut Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and former Head of the Physics Department. She earned her BA in theoretical Physics at the University of Bab Ezzouar, Algiers, Algeria and her PhD at the University of Virginia. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Division at Argonne National Laboratory and joined the Physics Department at Western Michigan University. She received the David. S. Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievements at the Advanced Light Source, LBNL, a Humboldt Fellowship award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and the Chair d’Excellence from SOLEIL National Synchrotron Laboratory, France. Berrah was elected fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is the recipient of the 2014 APS Davisson-Germer award, and she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berrah received an Honorary Doctoral Degree in Physics from the University of Turku, Finland, and received the Blaise Pascal Chair d’Excellence from Ile de France. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.