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.