The Materials Research Society (MRS) has selected Mattia Biesuz, University of Trento, and Aditya Sood, Stanford University, as recipients of the 2022 MRS Postdoctoral Awards. This award recognizes postdoctoral scholars who are showing exceptional promise and excellence in scientific research, leadership, advocacy, outreach or teaching.
Biesuz and Sood will be recognized at the 2022 MRS Spring Meeting during the MRS Award Recipients—Lightning Talks and Panel Discussion event Monday, May 9, at 5:30 pm (HST). Sood will be in attendance and will present Towards Ultrafast Atomistic "Movies" of Operating Nano-electronic Devices and participate in the panel session.
Awarded “for fundamental contribution to the knowledge and development of flash sintering phenomena and processes in ceramics,” Biesuz received his PhD degree in materials engineering at the University of Trento (Italy) in 2017 defending a thesis on the flash sintering mechanisms in alumina and glass-containing alumina ceramics. Since then, he had several research experiences as a postdoc in China, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and Italy.
His research interests currently include various sintering technologies for ceramics consolidation (flash sintering, spark plasma sintering, cold sintering, ultrafast high-temperature sintering), field-assisted ion exchange in glasses and glass-ceramics, porous materials, polymer-derived ceramics and high-entropy compounds. His research has been mostly focused on underlying the peculiar physical-chemical effects activated by electric fields during ceramics processing. To date, he has published 78 manuscripts. His works have been awarded the Pfeil Award (Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining) and Best Paper Award in the Journal of Asian Ceramic Societies. He is an associate editor of Materials, and a member of MRS and ICerS.
Sood is awarded “for pioneering correlated dynamic structure and transport studies, and the discovery of a new electrically-triggered metastable phase in an operating device,” and is a postdoctoral research scientist at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at Stanford University and SLAC National Laboratory, working with Aaron Lindenberg and William Chueh. He received his BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and PhD degree from Stanford University, both in materials science and engineering. His PhD was done under the supervision of Kenneth Goodson in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford, in close collaboration with the group of Eric Pop in electrical engineering. His interests lie at the intersection of thermal transport, nanoelectronics and ultrafast physics, with a focus on visualizing and controlling atomistic dynamics across a range of technologically relevant timescales. His awards include the Batra Gold Medal from IIT Kanpur (2011), the Gold Graduate Student Award from MRS (2017), and the LCLS Young Investigator Award from SLAC National Laboratory (2021).
About the Materials Research Society
MRS is an organization of over 13,000 materials researchers from academia, industry and government worldwide, and a recognized leader in promoting the advancement of interdisciplinary materials research and technology to improve the quality of life. MRS members are students and professionals hailing from physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and engineering—the full spectrum of materials research. Headquartered in Warrendale, Pennsylvania (USA), MRS membership now spans 90 countries, with approximately 45 percent of members residing outside the United States.
MRS serves and engages members across generations to advance their careers and promote materials research and innovation. The Society produces high-quality meetings and publications, assuring that members of all career stages can present and publish their most important and timely work to an international and interdisciplinary audience. MRS continues to expand its professional development portfolio, as well as promote diversity and inclusion in the scientific workforce, with career services for researchers worldwide. The Society advocates for the importance of scientific research and innovation to policymakers and the community. And the MRS Awards program honors those whose work has already had a major impact in the field, as well as those whose work shows great promise for future leadership.
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