International Day of Women and Girls in Science is Every Day at Stevens
Svetlana Malinovskaya, Ansu Perekatt and Pinar Akcora representative of Stevens’ inspiring faculty within the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science
Feb. 11 is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an annual observance adopted by the United Nations General Assembly to promote the full and equal access and participation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Stevens Institute of Technology’s Charles V. Schaefer School of Engineering and Science has a proud history of female faculty from all around the globe. This year, we are highlighting three of them: Svetlana Malinovskaya, Ansu Perekatt and Pinar Akcora.
Malinovskaya laser focused on atomic, molecular and optical sciences
Before joining Stevens in 2006, professor Svetlana Malinovskaya built an impressive career with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and mathematics from Novosibirsk State University in Russia. She was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for postdoctoral research at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), followed by positions at the University of Florida’s Quantum Theory Project and Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics. She later became a theory fellow at the NSF-funded FOCUS Center at the University of Michigan. Now a professor in the Department of Physics, she directs the Ultrafast Dynamics and Quantum Control Theory lab at Stevens.
Malinovskaya's research focuses on ultrafast laser interactions with atoms and molecules, developing quantum control methods driven by advances in optics, spectroscopy and laser science. Her work spans ultrafast Raman spectroscopy, ultracold gas dynamics, optical control of hybrid nanomaterials, and optimal control theory.
Malinovskaya has received multiple prestigious grants, including ONR awards (2016–2025) for pioneering quantum-enhanced FAST CARS and remote sensing projects, along with a 2024–2025 ONR STTR Award as co-principal investigator on a REMPI-based magnetometry initiative. She was honored with the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2023) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz Visiting Professor Scholarship (2022–2023).
An extensive publication record includes more than 100 high-impact papers in top-tier journals such as Quantum Science & Technology, Physical Review Letters, and Nature Scientific Reports. She also authored the book “From Atomic to Mesoscale: The Role of Quantum Coherence in Systems of Various Complexities,” written in 2015.
Perekatt peers into problem of intestinal cancer relapse
Assistant professor Ansu Perekatt, of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, gained an early interest in science thanks to growing up on an animal farm in southwest India. Those interactions with animals fascinated her and that inquisitiveness led her to Hoboken, New Jersey, where she has worked at Stevens since 2018.
These days, Perekatt is tackling much tougher questions than the ones on her family farm in India. She is interested in understanding how tumor-initiating cells persist in intestinal cancers. Many methods have been used to fight colon and other intestinal cancers for a long time. And yet, the cancers often return, even in cases in which aggressive measures seemed to remove all traces of the disease.
To better understand this trend, Perekatt’s lab examines the role of stem cells, which are cells that have the potential to become any type of cell in the body. Cancer is also thought to arise from stem cells. Perekatt is researching how certain mature epithelial cells in the colon revert to cancer-initiating stem cells.
“The theory is that relapses happen because cells are sneaky and learn to adapt under harsh environments. Mature cells harboring certain mutations can become cancer-initiating stem cells to cause cancer,” she said in 2020.
Perekatt has won honors such as the Gallo Award for Outstanding Cancer Research, and a $450,000 National Institutes of Health career transition award from the National Cancer Institute. Perekatt has published her findings in journals such as Nature Genetics, Cancer Research, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her research interests also include inflammatory bowel disease. In October 2024, she co-published a paper with several Stevens undergraduate students who contributed to IBS research.
Akcora brings big polymer energy to materials science
Originally from Turkey, associate professor Pinar Akcora, of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland-College Park before landing at Stevens. Akcora Research Group works on nanoparticles, colloids and gels with the goal of creating new soft materials for energy, biotechnology and environmental applications. She received several grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2021, she received a $424,000 NSF grant for her project “Directed Ionic Transport in Poly(Ionic Liquid)-Grafted Nanoparticles in Polarizable Media.”
That project aims to develop sustainable materials for their ion transport properties in solutions, which is important for membrane applications for water treatment and electrolytes for energy applications. Akcora also received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award, which recognizes promising early career faculty members, in 2010. She was the principal investigator of the NSF REU/RET website between 2021-23.
Other awards for Akcora include the Stevens Institute of Technology Research Recognition Award in 2010 and the University of Missouri’s Research Board Award in 2009.
Akcora had a U.S. patent approved in 2010 and she has published in journals such as Nature Materials, Macromolecules, Nanoscale, ACS Macro Letters, Physical Review E, Soft Matter, Journal of Molecular Liquids, Journal of Applied Physics, and several more.