Prize Recipient


Mercouri Kanatzidis
Northwestern University

Citation:

"For seminal contributions to the discovery of new families of thermoelectric materials with the highest known figure of merit."

Background:

Mercouri Kanatzidis received his B.S. in chemistry from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 1979, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Iowa in 1984. He has been the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Chair Professor at Northwestern University since 2006. Honors received include the Presidential Young Investigator Award National Science Foundation; American Chemical Society (ACS) Inorganic Division: EXXON Award in Solid State Chemistry; Beckman Young Investigator; Alfred P. Sloan Fellow; Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher Scholar; Sigma Xi Senior Meritorious Faculty Award; John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow; Alexander von Humboldt Prize; ACS Morley Medal Cleveland Section, ENI Award for the "Renewable Energy Prize", MRS Medal, International Thermoelectric Society Outstanding Achievement Award, Royal Chemical Society (RSC) DeGennes Prize, and most recently the ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry for 2016. He was elected Materials Research Society Fellow in 2010, the American Association for the Advancment of Science in 2012, Einstein Professor Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014, and elected Fellow of RSC in 2015. Kanatzidis also received the Wilhelm Manchot Research Professorship, Technical University of Munich for 2016.


Selection Committee:

Claudia Felser (Chair), Hideo Hosono, Chris Wolverton, Emilia Morosan