Each year the surfaces in biomaterials foundation bestows awards upon two applicants who have shown considerable effort in the Surface Science field. In keeping with the Foundation's commitment to advancing education as well as industry, one of these awards is given to the student with the best poster submitted and presented at BioInterface each year.

The Foundation also gives an award to one person who has demonstrated excellence in the surface science industry. The winner is notified before BioInterface and is invited to speak about the advancements made at the symposium.

If you would like to nominate someone for an Excellence in Surface Science Award, click HERE.

Excellence in Surface Science Award

This award honors an outstanding researcher for significant contributions to surface science at the biointerface or an entrepreneur for practical application of surface science in the development of medical devices. The winner will present his or her work at the symposium Awards session.

2009 Winner: Gabor Somorjai, University of California, Berkeley

Gabor A. Somorjai was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 4, 1935. He was a fourth year student of Chemical Engineering at the Technical University in Budapest in 1956 at the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution. He left Hungary and emigrated to the United States, where he received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1960. He became a U.S. citizen in 1962.

After graduation, he joined the IBM research staff in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he remained until 1964. At that time, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1967, he was named Associate Professor, and in 1972 promoted to Professor. Concurrent with his faculty appointment, he is also a Faculty Senior Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division, and Director of the Surface Science and Catalysis Program at the Center for Advanced Materials, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He was appointed University Professor by the UC Board of Regents in March of 2002.

Professor Somorjai has educated 125 Ph.D. students and more than 250 postdoctoral fellows, about 100 of whom hold faculty positions; many more are leaders in industry. He is the author of more than 1000 scientific papers in the fields of surface chemistry, heterogeneous catalysis, and solid state chemistry. He has written three textbooks, Principles of Surface Chemistry, Prentice Hall, 1972; Chemistry in Two Dimensions: Surfaces, Cornell University Press, 1981; and Introduction to Surface Chemistry and Catalysis, Wiley-Interscience, 1994; and a monograph, Adsorbed Monolayers on Solid Surfaces, Springer-Verlag, 1979.