Markus J. Buehler, Jerry McAfee Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a 2022 International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) Fellows Awardee. The IACM Fellows Award recognizes individuals with a distinguished record of research accomplishment and publication in areas of computational mechanics and demonstrated support of the IACM through membership and participation in the Association, its meetings, and activities.

Nadya Mason, Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been named leader of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Mason, who has been at Illinois since 2005, is an experimental physicist who works at the intersection of complex materials, superconductivity, and nanotechnology.

Anke Weidenkaff, professor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, has been selected for the first Karl W. Böer Renewable Energy Mid-Career Award. This award is presented to an active researcher, within 20 years of earning their highest degree, who is making significant contributions with promise for enduring impact in solar energy, wind energy, or other forms of renewable energy through research, development, or economic enterprise, or to an individual making extraordinary valuable and enduring contributions to the fields of solar energy, wind energy, or other forms of renewable energy in other ways.

Michael Saliba, professor at the Institute for Photovoltaics at the University of Stuttgart, and Research Center Jülich, has received the 2022 European Materials Research Society EU-40 Materials Prize. This award seeks to honor those whose work has already had a major impact in the field, and those young researchers whose work already leads to great expectations for future leadership. The award is for researchers who show exceptional promise as leaders in materials science, having performed the research while working in Europe.

The US Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Initiative has selected scientist Y. Shirley Meng of the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, for an innovation award in recognition of her research on batteries, a critical component of a clean energy future. A pioneer in discovering and designing better materials for energy storage, Meng serves as chief scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science and as a professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at The University of Chicago.

Danna Freedman, the F.G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been named a recipient of a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship. Her research focuses on using inorganic chemistry to create new molecules for quantum information science. Freedman joined the MIT faculty in 2021. Before joining MIT, she was a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University.

Markus J. Buehler, Jerry McAfee Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a 2022 James R. Rice Medalist. He received this award for contributions to the mechanics of protein materials, bioinspired materials, and multiscale analyses of solids. The prize is awarded to a mid-career researcher in the field of engineering sciences who has had a substantial impact in his/her field. At the time of the nomination, eligible candidates must be within 10–20 years of earning their PhD, or equivalent degree.

The 2022 Millennium Technology Prize has been awarded to Scientia Professor Martin Green of the University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia, for his innovation that has transformed the production of solar energy.This award recognizes Green’s leadership in the development of the Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC). Since its development in 1983, the PERC has gone on to become the most commercially viable and efficient silicon solar-cell technology for use in solar panels and for large-scale electricity production, accounting for almost 90% of the global solar-cell market. Green developed the PERC with his team by improving the quality of both the top and the rear surface of standard silicon solar cells.

Eva Zurek, a theoretical and computational chemist at the University at Buffalo (UB), The State University of New York, has been named Fellow of the American Physical Society. Zurek is a professor of chemistry in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and an adjunct faculty member in physics and in chemical and biological engineering. Her research uses supercomputers and first-principles calculations to study the electronic structure, properties, and reactivity of a wide variety of materials.

The Federal Council appointed Tanja Zimmermann as Empa’s new CEO. She is currently a member of the institute’s Directorate and head of the Functional Materials Department, as well as co-head of the Research Focus Area Sustainable Built Environment. Zimmermann is the first woman in Empa’s more than 140-year history to take over as head of the materials research institute. Zimmermann has worked closely with industry as well as with national and international research partners, focusing primarily on the development and production of functionalized wood- and cellulose-based materials with tailored properties.

Karen I. Winey, the Harold Pender Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Penn Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, has received USD$2.2 million from the US Department of Energy to fund research in synthesizing cleaner and more efficient fuel-cell technologies. Her current research focuses on developing a new fluorine-free polymer in order to address toxicity of fluorine-based polymers used to convert hydrogen into electric power.

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