Prize Recipient

Charles M. Lieber
Harvard University

Citation:

"For his outstanding contributions in nanostructured and functional nanostructured materials."

Background:

Charles M. Lieber was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1959. He attended Franklin and Marshall College for his undergraduate education and graduated with honors in Chemistry. After doctoral studies at Stanford University and postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, he moved in 1987 to the East Coast to assume an Assistant Professor position at Columbia University. Here Lieber embarked upon a new research program addressing the synthesis and properties of low-dimensional materials. Lieber moved to Harvard University in 1991 and now holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, where is the Mark Hyman Professor of Chemistry, and the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. At Harvard Lieber has pioneered the synthesis of a broad range of nanoscale materials, the characterization of the unique physical properties of these materials, and the development of methods of hierarchical assembly of nanoscale wires, together with the demonstration of applications of these materials in nanoelectronics, biological sensing and nanophotonics. Lieber has also developed and applied a new chemically sensitive microscopy for probing organic and biological materials at nanometer to molecular scales. This work has been recognized by a number of awards, including the Feynman Award in Nanotechnology, ACS Pure Chemistry Award, and NSF Creativity Award. Lieber is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves on the Editorial and Advisory Boards of a number of science and technology journals. Lieber has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is the principle inventor on more than 15 patents. In his spare time, Lieber recently founded a nanotechnology company, NanoSys, Inc., with the modest goal of revolutionizing commercial applications in chemical and biological sensing, computing, photonics, and information storage.

Selection Committee:

Tom Russell (Chair), Bob Celotta, Donald Bethune, Louis Brus, Lynn Schneemeyer