Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology

Der Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology ist ein vom Foresight Institute in Palo Alto seit 1993 verliehener Preis für Nanotechnologie und Nanowissenschaften. Zuerst wurde er alle zwei Jahre vergeben, seit 1997 jährlich.

Er ist nach Richard Feynman benannt, dessen Vortrag There is plenty of room at the bottom von 1959 vielfach als visionäre Vorwegnahme der Nanotechnologie-Revolution gilt. Der Preis ist mit 5000 Dollar dotiert und wird in den Kategorien Experiment und Theorie vergeben.

Das 1986 von Eric Drexler gegründete Foresight Institute ist eine Non-profit-Organisation zur Förderung der Nanowissenschaften. Sie lobt auch einen großen Preis aus von je 250.000 Dollar für die erste Person, die einen Nanoroboter-Arm mit präziser Steuerung und einen 8-Bit-Addierer im Nanobereich realisiert.

Preisträger

Jahr	Preisträger	Institution	Begründung
1993	Charles Musgrave	California Institute of Technology	“for his work on modeling a hydrogen abstraction tool useful in nanotechnology”
1995	Nadrian C. Seeman	New York University	“for developing ways to construct three-dimensional structures, including cubes and more complex polyhedra, from synthesized DNA molecules”

Kategorie Experiment

Jahr	Preisträger	Institution	Begründung
1997	James K. Gimzewski	IBM-Forschungslabor Rüschlikon bei Zürich	“for work using scanning probe microscopes to manipulate molecules”
	Reto Schlittler
	Christian Joachim	Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Toulouse (CEMES)
1998	M. Reza Ghadiri	Scripps Research Institute	“for groundbreaking work in constructing molecular structures through the use of self-organization, the same forces used to assemble the molecular machine systems found in nature”
1999	Phaedon Avouris	Thomas J. Watson Research Center	“[for] the development of carbon nanotubes for potential computing device applications”
2000	Richard Stanley Williams	Hewlett Packard Laboratories	“for building a molecular switch, a major step toward their long-term goal of building entire memory chips that are just a hundred nanometers wide”
	Philip Kuekes
	James R. Heath	University of California, Los Angeles
2001	Charles M. Lieber	Harvard University	“for his pioneering experimental work in molecular nanotechnology which included seminal contributions to the synthesis and characterization of the unique physical properties of carbon nanotubes and nanowires”
2002	Chad A. Mirkin	Northwestern University	“for opening up new possibilities for the fabrication of molecular machine systems by selectively functionalizing nanoparticles and surfaces, particularly with DNA, enabling the self-assembly of new structures which move us closer to the goal of molecular manufacturing”
2003	Carlo Montemagno	University of California, Los Angeles	“for his pioneering research into methods of integrating single molecule biological motors with nano-scale silicon devices, which opens up new possibilities for nanomachines”
2004	Homme Hellinga	Duke University	“for his achievement in the engineering of atomically precise devices capable of precise manipulation of other molecular structures”
2005	Christian Schafmeister	University of Pittsburgh	“for his work in developing a novel technology synthesizing macromolecules of intermediate sizes (between 1000 and 10,000 Daltons) with designed shapes and functions”
2006	Erik Winfree	California Institute of Technology	“for their work demonstrating that DNA tiles can be designed to form crystalline nanotubes that exhibit a stiffness greater than the biological protein nanofilament actin, [and for having] established that algorithmic self-assembly could work well enough to generate non-trivial non-periodic patterns”
	Paul W. K. Rothemund
2007	Fraser Stoddart	University of California, Los Angeles	“[for having] pioneered the synthesis and assembly of unique active molecular machines for manufacturing into practical nanoscale devices”
2008	James Mitchell Tour	Rice University	“for the Synthesis of Nanocars... and other molecular machines [which] is providing critical insight in investigations of bottom-up molecular manufacturing”
2009	Yoshiaki Sugimoto	Universität Ōsaka	“in recognition of their pioneering experimental demonstrations of mechanosynthesis, specifically the use of atomic resolution dynamic force microscopy – also known as non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) – for vertical and lateral manipulation of single atoms on semiconductor surfaces”
	Masayuki Abe
	Oscar Custance	National Institute for Materials Science, Japan
2010	Masakazu Aono	International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA Center), National Institute for Materials Science in Japan	“in recognition of his pioneering and continuing work, including research into the manipulation of atoms, the multiprobe STM and AFM, the atomic switch, and single-molecule-level chemical control including ultradense molecular data storage and molecular wiring; and his inspiration of an entire generation of researchers who have made their own ground-breaking contributions to nanotechnology”
2011	Leonhard Grill	Fritz-Haber-Institut	“in recognition of his pioneering and continuing work on manipulating and structuring functional matter at the atomic scale”
2012	Gerhard Meyer	IBM Forschungslabor Zürich	“[for] their remarkable experiments advancing the frontiers of scanning probe microscopy. They were the first to produce images of molecular orbitals and charges detailed enough to identify the structure of individual molecules, as well as metal-molecule complexes. They have also been able to precisely make and break individual chemical bonds.”
	Leo Gross
	Jascha Repp
2013	David N. Beratan	Duke University	“The award recognizes Prof. Beratan's development of theoretical approaches to understand the function of complex molecular and macromolecular assemblies and machines.”
2014	Joseph W. Lyding	University of Illinois	“Development of scanning tunneling microscope (STM) technology”
2015	Michelle Y. Simmons	University of New South Wales	“Fabricating electronic devices with atomic-precision accuracy”
2016	Franz J. Giessibl	Universität Regensburg	“…pioneered major advancements in scanning probe microscopy for imaging and manipulating individual atoms, including the first achievement of atomic resolution by frequency modulation atomic force microscopy, inventing the qPlus sensor-based atomic force microscopy technique, and achieving subatomic resolution and the visualization of individual chemical bonds”
2017	William M. Shih	Harvard University	“…the total mastery of the design and synthesis of three dimensional DNA nanostructures. His work extended DNA origami from 2D to 3D - a breakthrough in the field. Shih entered DNA nanotechnology with a Nature article demonstrating the folding of a single strand of DNA; it was on the strength of this Nature paper that Shih got his position at Harvard. Thanks in large part to Shih's efforts over the last decade, programmable self-assembly of 3D DNA nanoshapes the size of a virus now is routine. His groundbreaking studies in Nature and Science that generalized DNA origami to solid three-dimensional structures were published in 2009.”
2018	Christopher Lutz	IBM Research	“For advances in manipulating atoms and small molecules on surfaces and employing them for data storage and computation.”
	Andreas Heinrich	IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience
2019	Lulu Qian	California Institute of Technology
2020	Massimiliano Di Ventra	University of California, San Diego
2021	Anne-Sophie Duwez	Université de Liège
2022	Sergei V. Kalinin	University of Tennessee
2023	James J. Collins	Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kategorie Theorie

Jahr	Preisträger	Institution	Begründung
1997	Charles Bauschlicher	NASA Ames Research Center	“for work in computational nanotechnology”
	Stephen Barnard
	Creon Levit
	Glenn Deardorff
	Al Globus
	Jie Han
	Richard Jaffe
	Alessandra Ricca
	Marzio Rosi
	Deepak Srivastava
	H. Thuemmel
1998	Ralph Merkle	Zyvex	“for their computational modeling of molecular tools for atomically-precise chemical reactions”
	Stephen Walch	ELORET Corporation/NASA Ames Research Center
1999	William A. Goddard III	California Institute of Technology	“for their work in modeling the operation of molecular machine designs”
	Tahir Cagin
	Yue Qi
2000	Uzi Landman	Georgia Institute of Technology	“for his pioneering work in computational materials science for nanostructures”
2001	Mark A. Ratner	Northwestern University	“[for being] a theorist whose work has made major contributions to the development and success of nanometer-scale electronic devices”
2002	Don Brenner	North Carolina State University	“for fundamental advances in our ability to model molecular machine systems, and for the design and analysis of components likely to be important in future molecular manufacturing systems”
2003	Marvin Cohen	University of California, Berkeley	“for their contributions to the understanding of the behavior of materials”
	Steven G. Louie
2004	David Baker	University of Washington	“for their development of RosettaDesign, a program that has a high success rate in designing stable protein structures with a specified backbone folding structure”
	Brian Kuhlman	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2005	Christian Joachim	CNRS	“for developing theoretical tools and establishing the principles for design of a wide variety of single molecular functional nanomachines”
2006	Erik Winfree	California Institute of Technology	“for their ‘Theory in Molecular Computation and Algorithmic Self-assembly’ research … based on their demonstration of methods for universal computation with DNA, including using DNA tiles to simulate cellular automata”
	Paul W. K. Rothemund
2007	David A. Leigh	University of Edinburgh	“[for] the design and synthesis of artificial molecular motors and machines from first principles and … the construction of molecular machine systems that function in the realm of Brownian motion”
2008	George C. Schatz	Northwestern University	“first for sophisticated modeling and optimization of the dip pen nanolithography method of nanofabrication, and second, for his explanation of plasmon effects in metallic nanodots”
2009	Robert A. Freitas Jr.	Institute for Molecular Manufacturing	“in recognition of his pioneering theoretical work in mechanosynthesis in which he proposed specific molecular tools and analyzed them using ab initio quantum chemistry to validate their ability to build complex molecular structures, [and] also his previous work in systems design of molecular machines, including replicating molecular manufacturing systems, which should eventually be able to make large atomically precise products economically, and the design of medical nanodevices, which should eventually revolutionize medicine”
2010	Gustavo E. Scuseria	Rice University	“for his development of quantum mechanical methods and computational programs that make it possible to carry out accurate theoretical predictions of molecules and solids, and their application to the chemical and electronic properties of carbon nanostructures”
2011	Raymond Astumian	University of Maine	“for his contributions to the understanding of Brownian motion and its use to power molecular motors and other functional mechanisms at the atomic scale”
2012	David Soloveichik	University of California, San Francisco	“for his general theory of DNA displacement cascades. He has shown that systems of DNA molecules can be designed with arbitrary dynamic behavior. In particular, he has shown that they are Turing-complete, and so can be made to run any general-purpose computer program.”
2013	Alexander K. Zettl	University of California, Berkeley	“The award recognizes Prof. Zettl’s exceptional work in the fabrication of nanoscale electromechanical systems (NEMS), spanning multiple decades and including carbon nanotube-based bearings, actuators, and sensors brought to fruition with cutting-edge nanoscale engineering.”
2014	Amanda S. Barnard	CSIRO	“Research for diamond nanoparticles”
2015	Markus J. Buehler	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	“Research enabling new multiscale paradigms in hierarchical systems”
2016	Bartosz A. Grzybowski	Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea	„research on computer-assisted organic synthesis“
2017	Giovanni Zocchi	University of California, Los Angeles	“…for inventing a method (“nano-rheology”) for measuring stress – strain relations of soft nanoparticles with sub-Angstrom resolution and thereby discovering that enzyme mechanics is viscoelastic. Nano-rheology allows the exploration of conformational changes in enzymes from a materials science perspective. This includes the demonstration of nano-rheology as a biochemical assay. When enzymes bind small molecules, such as substrates or inhibitors, their mechanical susceptibility changes. This effect is easily detected by nano-rheology. The method can measure binding of small ligands, where existing label free methods such as the Biacore instrument fail. Nano-rheology thus emerges as a potential alternative to electronic and spin spectroscopies for certain bio-molecular assays.”
2018	O. Anatole von Lilienfeld	Universität Basel	“For introducing innovative new ways to accelerate QM quality predictions across materials compound space by multiple orders of magnitude.”
2019	Giulia Galli	University of Chicago
2020	Hao Yan	Arizona State University
2021	Kendall N. Houk	University of California, Los Angeles
2022	James R. Chelikowsky	University of Texas
2023	Alexandre Tkatchenko	Universität Luxemburg

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