IMDEA Materials’ Scientific Director, Prof. Javier LLorca, has become the first Spanish researcher to receive the Morris Cohen Award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS).
The recognition comes a year after Prof. LLorca was the first Spaniard to be awarded the TMS Structural Materials Division’s Distinguished Scientist/Engineer honour.
Prof. LLorca, who is also a professor of Materials Science at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), was presented with the prize during the TMS’ 153 Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
The Morris Cohen Award recognises an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the science and/or technology of materials properties.
It was given to Prof. LLorca “for his contributions to unveil the link between microstructure and mechanical properties in a wide variety of structural materials by means of multiscale modelling strategies and nanomechanical characterisation techniques”.
The formal presentation of the award took place at the TMS-AIME Awards Ceremony of the TMS Annual Meeting on Wednesday.
It is the latest recognition of Prof. LLorca’s ongoing efforts to advance the field of materials science. He is also the current recipient of the Leonardo Torres Quevedo National Research Prize in Engineering, a prize he will receive in an official ceremony in Gandia on March 14.
TMS is a professional society that connects minerals, metals, and materials scientists and engineers who work in industry, academia, and government positions around the world. TMS currently includes more than 13,000 professional and student members on all continents.
The Morris Cohen Award was established in 2012 on recognition of the legacy of Prof. Morris Cohen (1911-2005), an American metallurgist, that developed his scientific career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Prof Cohen was one of the most important metallurgists of the past century and his contributions to the mechanisms and kinetics of the martensitic transformation, strengthening mechanisms and rapid solidification of alloys were important milestones in the emerging field of materials science.
Moreover, he was a principal figure in the new field of materials science and engineering and cochaired the US National Academy of Science’s Committee on the Survey of Materials Science and Engineering, which produced the 1974 study Materials and Man’s Needs: Materials Science and Engineering.
That report, better known as the Cohen report, has dramatically changed the policy on materials education and research in the US and in the rest of the world.
Previous recipients of the Morris Cohen award are internationally recognized scientists in physical metallurgy, such as Mike Ashby (Cambridge University), Greg Olson (Northwestern University) and Tresa Pollock (University of California at Santa Barbara), among others.
