Dawn Bonnell is a Trustee Professor of Materials Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center.  She received her PhD from the University of Michigan and was a Fulbright scholar to the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, after which she worked at IBM Thomas Watson Research Center.  She has authored or coauthored over 230 papers, and edited several books.  Her work has been recognized by the Presidential Young Investigators Award, the Ross Coffin Purdy Award, the Staudinger/Durrer Medal from ETH Zurich, the Heilmeier Faculty Research Award and several distinguished lectureships.  

Professor Bonnell serves on many editorial boards, national and international advisory committees, is a past president of the American Vacuum Society (AVS), served on the governing board of the American Institute of Physics, and is a past vice president of The American Ceramic Society.  She is a Fellow of The American Ceramic Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the AVS.  She is the founding Director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center, a cross disciplinary organization with an extensive research, education and outreach portfolio.

The research in the Bonnell group focuses on atomic processes at surfaces.  The group is known for the first STM imaging of atoms on oxide surfaces.  More recently her group developed a new paradigm for fabricating nanostructured devices, Ferroelectric Nanolithography, and discovered a new mechanism for harvesting light energy.   An additional outcome of this research program has been the invention of new probes that reveal the behavior of small structures.