IET unveils six finalists for prestigious Harvey research prize
28 Jun 2022
Six leading figures in research engineering have made the shortlist for one of the world’s most prestigious awards in their profession.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) A F Harvey Engineering Research Prize is worth £350,000 to the winner and is donated to aid their work.
The recipient will be announced in December and will also deliver a keynote lecture on their work in Spring next year.
Lasers and optoelectronics is the theme for this year’s award, which recognises outstanding research achievement in medical, microwave and radar or laser/optoelectronic engineering.
The finalists are drawn from institutions in the UK, Germany, USA and Japan. They include:
- Coskun Kocabas, professor in 2D Device Materials at the University of Manchester and National Graphene Institute for work controlling light with graphene-based devices over a broad spectral range from visible to microwave.
- James Durrant, professor of photochemistry in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London and Sêr Cymru solar professor, College of Engineering, University of Swansea. His research focuses on the use of transient laser spectroscopy and optoelectronic techniques to investigate the function of new materials for sustainable energy conversion.
- Professor of Physics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and director of the Laboratory of Ultrafast Physics and Optics John C. Travers for research on new light sources with tailored properties and has made multiple significant contributions to ultrafast nonlinear optics.
- Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics MD, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto Joyce Poon – also director-at-large for Optica specialising in integrated photonics on silicon.
- RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics team leader of Advanced Laser Processing Research Team Koji Sugioka, for his works on laser micro and nanofabrication, and ultrafast laser processing.
- Professor at the University of Stuttgart/director of the 2. Physics Institute Laura Na Liu for her research at the interface between nanophotonics, biology, and chemistry.
The award is named in honour of Dr A F Harvey who bequeathed money to the IET for a trust fund to be set up in his name to further research in the specified fields.
Pic: clockwise from top: Kocabas, Travers, Liu, Sugioka, Poon and Durrant
