Lab physicist receives Sylvie Jacquemot Early Career Prize

Staff scientist Elizabeth Grace of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been awarded the 2026 European Physical Society-Plasma Physics Division (EPS-PPCF) Sylvie Jacquemot Early Career Prize.

“I am very honored to receive this award,” Grace said. “I appreciate the support from my mentors and the opportunities at LLNL, which made this work possible.”

She was recognized for her groundbreaking work in developing an innovative single-shot laser imaging technique that captures plasma behavior with unparalleled resolution, significantly advancing the capabilities in high-energy-density physics.

As a National Ignition & Photon Science Summer Scholar in 2018 and 2019, Grace worked on the STRIPED FISH diagnostic that captures precise spatial and temporal characterization of the laser pulses. This work was also the topic of her Ph.D. dissertation at Georgia Tech University, for which she won the 2023 Springer Thesis Award.

In 2023, she returned to LLNL as a High Energy Density Science (HEDS) Center Fellow. As a postdoctoral fellow, Grace sought to apply her academic background in optics to laser plasma problems that LLNL scientists were studying.

“My work as a graduate student on STRIPED FISH applied to characterizing the laser pulse in space and time. We had an exciting tool for understanding the propagation behavior of light,” she said. “I proposed using it to capture plasma evolution in time and space with a single laser shot.”

Grace and LLNL colleagues developed the Single-shot Advanced Plasma Probe Holographic Reconstruction, or SAPPHIRE, diagnostic. This breakthrough creates plasma movies with 100 billion frames per second, illuminating ultrafast dynamics that were previously impossible to observe at once.

The research, conducted at the Jupiter Laser Facility and supported by Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding, was published in a September 2025 Optica paper. Now the team is working to apply SAPPHIRE to study other phenomena like relativistic transparency.

“I proposed this project in my fellowship application, and it worked on the first try. Science is usually not that linear,” she said. “I’m excited to see where this research goes and how other scientists apply it to new problems.”

Grace will give a plenary talk on her work at the 52nd EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, which will take place from June 29 to July 3 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. This prize is awarded jointly by the EPS Plasma Physics Division and the Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion journal of IOP Publishing to exceptional plasma physicists in the early stages of their careers.

The award is named after professor Sylvie Jacquemot from the Laboratoire pour l’Utilisation des Lasers Intenses located at École Polytechnique, France. Jacquemot is currently the coordinator of the Laserlab-Europe Consortium.