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Martin Harmer, director of the Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology (CAMN) at Lehigh University, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award for senior scientists by Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The international honour, one of the most prestigious given by Germany, recognises Harmer's lifetime research achievements in materials science and engineering.
Harmer, a professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh, is world-renowned for his studies of the properties of structural and electronic ceramic materials and their control at the micro- and nanoscale. He is particularly interested in developing novel transparent materials and nanomaterials with multi-functional properties. Currently, he is studying the sintering behaviour of nanoparticles of gold and iron oxide, and the mechanism of the conversion of polycrystalline alumina into single crystal sapphire for lighting applications.
As director of Lehigh's CAMN, Harmer leads a variety of projects. In one, a multi-disciplinary team of Lehigh researchers is working with peers from Harvard, Rice, Georgia Tech, UCLA and the Illinois Institute of Technology to study the economic and environmental impact of nanotechnology. The project is supported by a five-year, $1.7-million grant from the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center of the National Science Foundation.
“The real power of nano is evident when it supports discovery and innovation in other areas—areas such as medicine, computing, materials and environmental engineering,” says Harmer.
Lehigh has one of the top electron microscopy centers in the US, Harmer notes, and has for more than 30 years hosted the world's foremost annual microscopy short courses.
“Our facilities provide us with unmatched capability in nanocharacterisation”, he says. “But it is when these facilities support adjacent research interests—the search for more effective methods to target drugs directly at tumors, the efforts to remove harmful pollutants from ground water—that the possibilities and significance of nanoscale engineering really take shape.”
The Humboldt Award, which is worth about $60,000, will fund Harmer's research into the basic science of novel heat treatment (sintering) processes for growing new types of single crystal and multilayer ceramic materials with enhanced performance characteristics for applications such as laser lighting, medical ultrasound imaging and more efficient diesel engines.
The Humboldt Research Award for senior scientists is presented each year to a maximum of 100 top international researchers in engineering, humanities and the natural and physical sciences. It enables foreign academics to conduct research at German research institutions with researchers from Germany and from the rest of the world. Recipients are nominated by leading German scholars and have five years to use the award.
Harmer, a fellow of the American Ceramic Society and a member of the European Academy of Sciences, was awarded the ScD from Leeds University (UK) in recognition of lifetime contributions to science. He has published more than 200 articles and has been cited more than 2000 times in articles by other researchers. In 2002, he was named a “Highly Cited Researcher” by the Institute for Scientific Information.
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