AVS to present awards

At its annual symposium next month in Seattle (see page 61), four researchers will be honored for their achievements by AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing.

Jerry Tersoff, a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, will receive the Medard W. Welch Award “for seminal theoretical contributions to the understanding of surfaces, interfaces, thin films and nanostructures of electronic materials.”

The Albert Nerken Award is going to Richard J. Colton “for seminal scientific insights that accelerated the development of vastly improved surface and nanoscale analytical techniques, and of innovative biomolecular sensors.” Colton is director of the Institute for Nanoscience at the US Naval Research Laboratory and is acting superintendent of NRL’s chemistry division.

Stephen J. Pearton has garnered the biennial John A. Thornton Memorial Award and Lecture “for pioneering the science and application of advanced device fabrication techniques, including plasma etching, ion implantation for doping and electrical isolation, and formation of Ohmic and Schottky contacts for compound semiconductors.” He is a Distinguished Professor and Alumni Professor in the department of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida.

“For pioneering work in the application and development of in situ plasma and surface diagnostics to achieve a molecular understanding of thin film growth,” W. M. M. Kessels will receive the Peter Mark Memorial Award. He is an assistant professor in the department of applied physics at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.