Mina Bionta is an Associate Staff Scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA. Before SLAC, Mina was a Senior Postdoctoral Associate in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to joining MIT, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) in Varennes, QC, Canada. Mina received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Toulouse, and her B.S in Physics from Stanford University, with a minor in French. From 2009 to 2012, she was a Research Associate at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC). She is a member of APS, AWIS, and a senior member of Optica (formerly OSA). Mina’s research focuses on using ultrafast nanoscale light-matter interactions to characterize and control material properties and dynamics. Her work has garnered numerous accolades, such as being featured in Nature Photonics News & Views, Nature Materials News & Views, Optica's Optics and Photonics News Optics of the Year 2021, DESY Photon Science Highlights, MIT News, DESY News, SLAC News, by the MIT Center for Quantum Engineering, and chosen as a Chair's pick at CLEO:2019. In her spare time Mina enjoys cooking, running, and traveling.

advisor: Béatrice Chatel
co-advisor: Benoît Chalopin
Thesis: New experiment for understanding the physical mechanisms of ultrafast laser-induced electron emission from novel metallic nanotips