Materials, innovation, and the quality of life
- PDF / 882,587 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 45 Downloads / 238 Views
MATERIALS RESEARCH SOCIETY
OPINION LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Building on our core values, I hope we can encourage more scientists and researchers from around the world to engage as volunteers with MRS to serve the global materials community.
Materials, innovation, and the quality of life Oliver Kraft 2015 MRS President
I would first like to thank you for allowing me the honor and privilege to serve this year as President of the Materials Research Society (MRS) and for being the second MRS President residing outside of the United States. I think this reflects the continuing evolution of MRS toward being a truly global Society since its beginnings more than 40 years ago. About half of our membership is based outside of the United States, and I am excited to see more and more MRS University Chapters popping up around the world. Since my first MRS Meeting that I attended back in 1991, I have always found MRS to be an open and welcoming Society, making every MRS Meeting a place to be. Building on our core values, I hope we can encourage more scientists and researchers from around the world to engage as volunteers with MRS to serve the global materials community. We face pressing challenges, like the reduction of CO2 emissions and improving living conditions in many regions in Africa, to name just two. Peering through history’s looking glass, I believe that materials science and engineering will continue to play a pivotal role in advancing humankind. From bronze smelting in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, to the development of industrial steel production and vulcanization of rubber in the 1800s, to p- and n-type silicon in 1936, material advancements have catalyzed societal changes and enabled improvements in the quality of life. The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics is a perfect example of the impact of materials research. Awarded to Isamu Akasaki of Meijo University and Nagoya University, Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University, and Shuji Nakamura of the University of California–Santa Barbara, “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which has enabled bright and energysaving white light sources,” it is truly a “materials” Nobel. The efficient blue LEDs required the development of GaN-based alloys with different compositions as well as their integration into multilayered structures such as heterojunctions and quantum wells. This is materials research at its best. People in the field who attended Shuji Nakamura’s 1994 MRS Spring Meeting talk where he first showed his prototype blue LED still remember with awe the dazzling light it gave off. The current white LEDs taking over the world of lighting would not be possible without the invention of the blue LED. As the Nobel committee noted, about one-fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, and LEDs, which are rapidly replacing incandescent and fluorescent lighting, contribute to preserving materials resources. LEDs also last up to 100 times longer than incandescent bulbs. More importantly, LED lighting holds tremendous promise for incr
Data Loading...
