IEEE Robert E. Newnham Ferroelectrics Award for Prof. Beatriz Noheda

Prof. Beatriz Noheda of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials ( ZIAM ) has won the prestigious Robert E. Newnham Ferroelectrics Award. The award has been announced during the online IEEE-IFCS-ISAF conference. Prof. Noheda has been nominated for this award because of her ‘outstanding contributions to the understanding of the giant piezoelectricity in lead zirconate titanate and ferroelectric relaxors, based on her discovery of their low symmetry phases’. She receives $2,000 and a plaque with a certificate.

Noheda is Professor in the research group ‘Nanostructures of Functional Oxides’ of the Zernike Insitute for Advanced Materials. Her expertise lays in thin films of functional oxides, ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials, (synchrotron) X-ray diffraction, nanodomains and functional domain walls. She is also the founding director of the new research center CogniGron that aims to use materials (including ferroelectrics) as novel memory and logic elements in energy efficient brain-inspired computing.

The Robert E. Newnham Ferroelectrics Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a recognition for outstanding researchers in the field of dielectric, piezoelectric and ferroic materials who have contributed to the understanding of structure-property relations. The award can be given at any stage of the career, for one notable contribution or for the overall contribution to the research field. The award is named after Robert E. Newnham because of his leading role in understanding the relationships between structure and properties of materials and to honor him as a scientist.