Sauvage-Stoddart-Feringa Awards
Background
Miniaturization of electronic and magnetic devices spurred unprecedented, technological developments in information processing and storage. As a consequence, the progress in microelectronics exerts an increasing impact on modern societies. Downscaling mechanical devices and machines is expected to have a similar technological and societal impact. Although the field is still in its infancy, research in the past three decades has shown that the concepts of macroscopic device and machine can be transferred to the molecular or supramolecular level. Moreover, it has become evident that applications of molecular devices and molecular machines, enabled by appropriately integrating/interfacing them with their surroundings, could provide radically innovative solutions to significant problems in many areas of technology and medicine. The scientific maturity of this research and its great potential for breakthrough applications were testified by the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 to three founding fathers of the field, namely, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Ben Feringa.
The Sauvage-Stoddart-Feringa (SSF) Prizes are awarded every two years, in coincidence with the Mach-5 conference, and consist of one senior and one junior prize. Candidates need to be nominated by individual researchers or research institutions with consolidated reputation in the field of molecular machines and related disciplines, and the winners are selected by a panel of international experts. The senior prize is awarded to accomplished researchers who have made outstanding contributions to shape the field of artificial molecular machines with the design, synthesis and investigation of novel systems. The junior prize is reserved to young scientists (under 40 years old and less than 12 years from the PhD title), not holding a permanent position, who have made original outstanding contributions to the design, synthesis and study of artificial molecular machines. Both awardees are invited to deliver a lecture at the Mach-5 conference.
The names of the 2024 awardees will be published soon in this page
Previous Awardees
SSF Senior Prize 2022
Vincenzo Balzani, Emeritus Professor, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, Italy
SSF Junior Prize 2022
Víctor García-López, Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA