Jan Schwämmlein and Jiancheng Yang won the ECS 2019 Young Author Awards. The awards were presented at the 236th ECS Meeting in Atlanta, GA, on October 13-17, 2019. Schwämmlein received the Norman Hackerman Young Author Award for his paper, “Origin of Superior HOR/HER Activity of Bimetallic Pt-Ru Catalysts in Alkaline Media Identified via Ru@Pt Core-Shell Nanoparticles.” The prize, which honors corrosion expert Norman Hackerman, is given to the best paper published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society in the previous year. Yang received the Bruce Deal and Andy Grove Young Author Award for his paper, “2300V Reverse Breakdown Voltage Ga2O3 Schottky Rectifiers.” This award, established in honor of semiconductor industry pioneers Andy Grove and Bruce Deal, recognizes the best paper published in the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology in the previous year. The two young authors’ articles are free to read. They join a distinguished group of scientists; Stanley M. Whittingham, co-winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, won the ECS Young Author’s Award in 1971.
Jan Schwämmlein
Schwämmlein received his BSc and MSc in chemistry and is a PhD candidate at the Technical University of Munich. As a graduate student, he worked with Hubert Gasteiger on low-temperature fuel cells in acidic and alkaline environments. During this time, he contributed to a better understanding of the mechanism of the hydrogen oxidation reaction on bimetallic Pt-Ru catalysts via kinetic measurements on core-shell nanoparticles. Schwämmlein has authored six publications and contributed to several other papers as a coauthor. Beginning in early 2019, Schwämmlein works as a development engineer at Mercedes-Benz Fuel Cell GmbH.
Jiancheng Yang
Yang received his BS in chemical engineering (2015) and MEng in particle technology (2016) from the University of Delaware. In the fall of 2016, Yang completed a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Florida where he joined Fan Ren’s research group. Yang’s primary research has focused largely on the development of vertical rectifiers using Ga2O3 wide bandgap semiconductor material for power electronics applications. He has published over 40 technical journal papers and received the Graduate Research Award from the American Vacuum Society in the fall of 2018. Yang now works in the private sector as a process engineer at Keysight Technologies, a world-leading electronics test and measurement equipment company.
The Norman Hackerman Young Author Award
The Hackerman Young Author Award was established in honor of Norman Hackerman, an internationally known expert in corrosion. He taught chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin and rose to serve as the university’s eighteenth president. He also served as the fourth president of Rice University. At ECS, he was Chair of the Corrosion Division, technical editor of the Journal for 39 years, vice president (1954), and president (1957). Hackerman received many during his illustrious career including the National Medal of Science.
The Bruce Deal & Andy Grove Young Author Award
In May 2013, the Bruce Deal & Andy Grove Young Author Award was established in honor of semiconductor industry pioneers, Andy Grove and Bruce Deal. They co-authored a paper published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society describing the Deal-Grove model which mathematically describes the growth of an oxide layer on the surface of a material. The Deal-Grove model is used to analyze thermal oxidation of silicon in semiconductor device fabrication and has had a lasting influence on the semiconductor technology industry. Deal, who was highly regarded for his research involving silicon oxidation and passivation, served on or chaired numerous ECS committees. Grove is considered by many as a technology giant, involved with everything from memory chips to the digital revolution at large.
