This year's Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics will be awarded to Phaedon
Avouris and Tony Heinz for their pioneering work on the electrical and optical
properties of nanoscale carbon materials including carbon nanotubes - from basic
science to exciting applications. The award, accompanied by US$ 5,000, will
be presented at the Julius Springer Forum on Applied Physics 2008 at Harvard
University in Cambridge, MA, on 27 September 2008.
Future electronics and optoelectronics will be based on carbon nanostructures.
Avouris and Heinz’s studies of the electronic properties of nanotubes
and graphene aim at developing a future nanoelectronic technology with devices
that will be vastly more compact, fast and energy efficient than the current
silicon-based devices. The optoelectronic studies aim at uniting and integrating
this electronic technology with an optical technology based on the same materials.
Their research will aid in the development of future high-speed electronics,
communications systems, and sensors for diverse applications. Industries ranging
from automobile, aviation, space and energy conversion/conservation to bionanotechnology
and medicine are likely to benefit from their research.
Phaedon Avouris received his B.Sc. degree from Aristotle University in Greece
and was awarded his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry at Michigan State University.
He is currently an IBM Fellow and manager of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
at IBM’s Research Division at the Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights,
NY. He has also been an adjunct professor at Columbia University and the University
of Illinois.
Tony Heinz earned his B.Sc. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. degree in
physics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the David M. Rickey
Professor in the Departments of Physics and Electrical Engineering at Columbia
University, where he has been since 1995. Previous to this, he worked at IBM’s
Research Division at the Watson Research Center.
The Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics recognizes researchers who have
made an outstanding and innovative contribution to the fields of applied physics.
It has been awarded annually since 1998 by the Editors-in-Chief of the Springer
journals Applied Physics A – Materials Science & Processing and Applied
Physics B – Lasers and Optics.
Springer is the second-largest
publisher of journals in the science, technology, and medicine (STM) sector
and the largest publisher of STM books. Springer is part of Springer Science+Business
Media, one of the world’s leading suppliers of scientific and specialist
literature.