The European Academy of Sciences is thrilled to share that two of its members, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier, have been named among the 2023 Nobel Laureates in Physics for their groundbreaking work in generating attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.
Additionally, Pierre Agostini was also honored for his contributions to this field.
We are proud to have such innovative and accomplished individuals among our membership.
Congratulations to all three on this well-deserved recognition!
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.”
The 2023 Nobel Prize laureates in physics are being recognised for their experiments, which have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.
The laureates’ contributions have enabled the investigation of processes that are so rapid they were previously impossible to follow.
There are potential applications in many different areas. In electronics, for example, it is important to understand and control how electrons behave in a material. Attosecond pulses can also be used to identify different molecules, such as in medical diagnostics.
Professor Mohan Edirisinghe OBE, FREng, University College London awarded by The Royal Society with Clifford Paterson Medal and Lecture 2024 for seminal research in engineering science of making small structures from soft matter in novel scalable ways, creating new frontiers in functional applications causing major advances in manufacturing and healthcare.
The Clifford Paterson Medal and Lecture is given for outstanding contributions in the field of engineering. The lectureship was originally endowed by The General Electric Company in memory of Clifford Paterson FRS, who founded the GEC Research Laboratories in 1919. Originally the lectures were given on electrical science and technology but this was later broadened to any aspect of engineering. The first lecture was given in 1975. The medal is of bronze, is awarded biennially and is accompanied by a gift of £2,000.
These two institutions are among the most prestigious in China. The Institute of Materials at Wuham University is the best in the field of materials among the 4500 institutes in the country and the fifth best institute in China. The Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is considered the second best in all of China in the field of Sciences.
This distinction recognises the academic and research merit of the professor, who has published more than 700 papers during his career and has won more than 14 international and national awards and distinctions for his work over the past 10 years.
In addition to being a professor at NOVA FCT, Rodrigo Martins is Director of the Centre of Excellence in Microelectronics and Optoelectronic Processes of the Institute for the Development of New Technologies (CEMOP/UNINOVA) and President of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc) and past President of the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS).
Professor Roger Falconer was honored with the Chinese Government Friendship Award and Medal from Dr Zhu Jiang, Deputy Director, International Economic and Technical Cooperation and Exchange Centre (INTCE), Ministry of Water Resources.
‘The Friendship Award is the highest award to commend foreign experts’ who have ‘made contributions to China’s modernization drive’ and I have benefitted immensely from collaborating with Chinese scholars and practitioners since 1981.
Professor Falconer first started collaborating with China through Tongji University and have since worked with several leading universities and government institutes.
Examples include:
(i) Tongji University: designing harbours and marinas to maximise water quality; (ii) Tsinghua University: developing a model CONTANK to reduce chlorine levels in disinfection tanks; (iv) Tianjin University and Municipal Government: modelling Bohai Bay and Sea to balance economic development of the Bay for increased shipping, balanced with minimal environmental impact; (v) Wuhan University: developing urban models and formulations for stability of people and vehicles in floods; (vi) Hohai University and the Yangtse Institute for Conservation and Presentation: collaborating on global water security and sustainable water management.
Through these collaborations and Honorary Professor appointments at several universities and institutes, Falconer had the opportunity of co-authoring over 120 journal publications with Chinese scholars.
Whilst in China Prof. Falconer also visited the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) to receive the certificate of election as a Foreign Member in 2019 and delivered the second CAE Lead Lecture on ‘Global Water Security: Modelling for Sustainable Flood, Water Quality and Health Risk Assessment’ at a CAE LEADS and IWHR River Dialogue Livestreaming event.
The European Academy of Sciences congratulates Professor Roger Falconer for such a distinguished recognition that honours and enhances Prof’s whole professional career as well as our Academy.
We have the pleasure to announce the Leonardo da Vinci Award and Blaise Pascal Medallists 2023.
The awards will be presented at the Annual Symposium of the Academy on Oct. 23-24, 2023, in Madrid Spain.
Leonardo da Vinci Award – Professor J. N. Reddy
The European Academy of Sciences is very pleased to announce that Professor Junuthua N. Reddy, the Distinguished and Regents’ Professor at Texas A&M University, has been named the recipient of the 2023 Leonardo da Vinci Award, the Academy’s highest honor. Dr. Reddy is being recognized for his original and continuing contributions to research and educational activities related to composite materials and structures. In addition, Dr. Reddy is internationally renowned and highly cited for his research in the fields of applied and computational mechanics.
Blaise Pascal Medallist in Engineering – Professor George Z. Voyiadjis
In recognition of his contributions in Plasticity and Damage Modelling of Material Behaviour, including the bridging of length scales. He presently is the Boyd Chair Professor, the Bingham C. Stewart Distinguished Chair Professor, and the Holder of the Freeport-Mac MoRan Endowed Chair in Engineering at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge (LA), USA, and also the Director of Center for GeoInformatics at the same University. Professor Voyiadjis is Foreign Member of different scientific Academies in Europe and Asia, and was the recipient of several prestigious awards: Nadai Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Doctorate hc from Poznan University of Technology, Poland, Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Khan International Medal for outstanding life-long contribution to the field of Plasticity, Nathan M. Newmark Medal from ASCE, Most Cited Author 2005-2008 of the International Journal of Solids and Structures, Elsevier (Gradient Plasticity Theory with a Variable Length Scale Parameter).
Blaise Pascal Medallist in Physics – Professor Riccardo Betti
In recognition for his outstanding contributions to high temperature plasma physics with applications to nuclear fusion and for the development of the novel “shock ignition” approach to direct-drive inertial confinement fusion. One of the most prominent figures on the international scene of inertial fusion, he is the Robert L. McCrory Professor, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester, and Chief Scientist of the UR Laboratory for Laser Energetics. He received the Edward Teller Medal from the American Nuclear Society and the E.O.Lawrence Award from the US Department of Energy. He co-authored over 200 peer reviewed papers. He received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992.
Blaise Pascal Medallist in Materials Scince – Professor George Malliaras
In recognition for his contributions as a pioneer in science and technology of organic electronic materials. He is widely considered a founding father of organic bioelectronics, a field that applies organic electronic materials to biology and medicine. Professor Malliaras is one of the world’s foremost researchers in the field of soft electronic devices, who has made major contributions to our understanding of organic electronic and bioelectronic devices. He has made significant impacts in a number of areas including: understanding charge injection at metalorganic interfaces; patterning of organic electronic materials; understanding mixed conduction in organic electronic materials; development of mixed semiconductor devices; and the use of organic devices as brain interfaces.
Blaise Pascal Medallist in Mathematics – Professor Athanassios S. Fokas
In recognition for his exceptional contributions in the field that have solved a number of important problems but have also contributed to a number of important translational fields including engineering and medicine. DR. Fokas has made seminal contributions to the solution of a large class of nonlinear partial differential equations, occurring in a wide range of interdisciplinary applications, from two-phase flow in porous media to nonlinear optics.
The impact of Dr. Fokas’ work in various fields has been phenomenal. He introduced the so-called inverse spectral method which has led to the solution of several physically important equations arising in water waves, in plasma physics and in nonlinear optics. Regarding the transformative Fokas method, the citation in his Aristeion prize noted that this is “the most important development in the solution of partial differential equations since Fourier, Laplace and Cauchy”.
Blaise Pascal Medallist in Medicine and Life Sciences – Professor Patrick Couvreur
In recognition for his widely recognized work as a seminal scientist in the field of nanotechnologies for drug delivery and imaging sciences. Prof. Couvreur has been pioneering the field of biomaterials for nanomedicines. He has introduced for the first time the design of polyacrylamide nanoparticles and nanocapsules for the intracellular delivery of compounds which cannot diffuse into cells. The exceptional inventive contribution of Pr. Couvreur is further demonstrated by the introduction of squalene grafting to drugs, which leads to self-forming biodegradable nanoparticles able to deliver a high amount of drugs to various tissues. At the international level, his a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Medicine (USA), Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering (USA), Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium (Belgium), Foreign Member of the Spanish Academy of Pharmacy (Spain), International fellow of the Japanese Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology (Japan). He has held several ERC grants and been member of the ERC Board.
Professor Mohan Edirisinghe OBE FREng, Bonfield Chair of Biomaterials at University College London (UCL), is to be awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Colin Campbell Mitchell Award 2023.
The annual award, which carries a £3,000 prize, goes to an engineer or small team of engineers who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of any field of UK engineering. It will be presented at the Academy’s AGM in London on 19 September.
The Colin Campbell Mitchell Award commemorates the life and work of one of Scotland’s most accomplished marine engineers. Edinburgh-born Colin Campbell Mitchell OBE FRSE (1904-69) had a long and distinguished career with Brown Brothers Engineering, where he pioneered the development of the steam catapult for use on aircraft carriers. Awarded to an individual or team of up to six engineers, either working or studying in the UK, the Colin Campbell Mitchell Award is given for the greatest contribution to the advancement of any field of engineering within the period of the four years prior to the making of the award. A cash prize of £3,000 will be awarded to an individual, up to a maximum of £6,000 for a team.
Professor Edirisinghe, who is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences since 2020, is recognised for his world-leading contribution to the industrial application of polymeric fibres by inventing novel fibre manufacturing vessels and processes. He has pioneered a process called pressurised gyration, which can simultaneously combine flow rate, applied pressure and rotation speed and is applicable to all types of polymers worldwide.
Research director at the Institute of Chemical Sciences of Rennes, where she explores different aspects of chirality.
Jeanne Crassous’ research revolves around enantiomers, pairs of molecules made up of the same atoms, but whose 3D structure is the mirror image of each other. The phenomenon is called chirality. Jeanne Crassous has been following this path since obtaining a doctorate in organic chemistry in 1996. It gradually focused on helicenes. These helical molecules interact with light and modify its polarization, ie the orientation of the electromagnetic wave carried by the beam, and this differently depending on whether their helix turns to the right or to the left. This “chiroptic” property makes them interesting candidates for organic light-emitting diodes, or systems coded like watermarks.
You are invited to nominate candidates for the Blaise Pascal Medals and the Leonardo da Vinci Award. You can nominate members of the European Academy of Sciences or non-members.
Up to 6 Blaise Pascal Medals can be awarded, after proper selection within the scientific committee of each division and only one Leonardo da Vinci is awarded, to be selected by presidium, after propositions made by the different divisions.
The nominations files should be sent each to the head of the concerned division. Each file must be combined in 1 PDF and contain :
CV of the nominee : maximum 5 pages;
Letter(s) of nomination : 1 or 2 pages;
2 support letters : maximum 2 pages for each
(please note that each letter should be written from a different person – the nominator cannot write them all).
Anne-Marie Caminade received the Victor Grignard-Georg Wittig Prize on November 21 at the University of Saarbrucken (Germany)
Anne-Marie Caminade, deputy director of the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination (LCC-CNRS) in Toulouse since 2021, is a research director of exceptional class (DRCE CNRS). She is active in the field of phosphorus dendrimers. This research axis, initiated by Anne-Marie Caminade, finds its main fields of application in catalysis, materials science and biology/nanomedicine. Its scientific production is remarkable. It maintains numerous national and international collaborations.
The Victor Grignard-Georg Wittig Conference is a cooperation between the German Chemical Society and the French Chemical Society. Grignard and Wittig – two great names in chemistry, both Nobel Prize winners in chemistry. Victor Grignard was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1912 together with Paul Sabatier for his discovery of alkylmagnesium compounds, named after Grignard’s compounds. These compounds play a major role in organic chemistry. Georg Wittig and Herbert Charles Brown received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979 for their discovery of the Wittig reaction which bears his name. This allows the synthesis of alkenes by reacting aldehydes or ketones with ylides. In 1994 the first Victor Grignard – Georg Wittig conference took place. The winner was Jean-Pierre Majoral from Toulouse, France. Since then, renowned chemists from Germany and France are regularly awarded.
The concession has been agreed in the plenary session of the Corporation in December 2022. Thus, the institution grants José Antonio Carrillo this recognition, which is awarded every two years and is the oldest scientific award recognized in Spain.
The proposal for the award highlights the quality of Professor Carrillo’s scientific work in pure mathematics, ranging from Partial Differential Equations and related fields to various branches of applied science. His research has led him to obtain several important awards. The awarding of this medal responds to the fact that José Antonio Carrillo is already a world reference in his fields of study, with great presence in events or congresses, such as the International Conference for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) 2023, held worldwide, and in European institutions (European Mathemathics Society, European Academy of Sciences, Section Mathematics).
José Antonio Carrillo de la Plata was recently appointed Foreign Academician of the Corporation. He received his PhD from the University of Granada in 1996 and has developed his career in the field of differential equations of physics, in particular in nonlinear diffusion equations, kinetic equations and calculus of variations. His remarkable mastery of novel and delicate techniques of analysis, motivated by physics and probabilities, stands out. Since 2004, he has been successively ICREA Professor in Barcelona and since 2012 he was Professor at Imperial College London until 2020. In recent years, his contributions have been fundamental in fields such as mathematical biology, in its theoretical and computational aspects. These works and his growing international renown, as well as his extensive doctoral teaching, have promoted him to the chair of the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, in 2020.
The Echegaray Medal (Spanish: La Medalla Echegaray) is the highest scientific award granted by the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences. The award was created at the request of Santiago Ramón y Cajal after the award of the Nobel Prize to José Echegaray and is awarded in recognition of an exceptional scientific career. The first time it was granted was in 1907 to José Echegaray. The first woman to be awarded was Margarita Salas in 2016, more than a hundred years after the award was created.
The Corporation recognizes an eminent research career or a scientific contribution of special relevance.
