Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: UA Scientist, Kavli Laureate Meets With President Obama

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President Barack Obama talks with U.S. recipients of the 2010 Kavli Prize in the Oval Office on Monday, June 6. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Abstract:
Optical scientist Roger Angel and fellow Kavli Laureates met with President Barack Obama this week in the White House.

UA Scientist, Kavli Laureate Meets With President Obama

Washington, DC | Posted on June 7th, 2011

At the White House on Monday, June 6, President Barack Obama met in the Oval Office with the seven U.S. recipients of the 2010 Kavli Prizes - including the University of Arizona's Roger Angel - to recognize and honor their seminal contributions to the three fields for which the prizes are awarded: astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience.

Joined by the president's science advisor, John P. Holdren, Obama greeted Kavli Prize Laureates Angel; Jerry E. Nelson of the University of California, Santa Cruz; Donald M. Eigler of the IBM Almaden Research Center; James E. Rothman of Yale University; Richard H. Scheller of Genentech; Nadrian C. Seeman of New York University; and Thomas C. Südhof of Stanford University.

Accompanying the laureates were Fred Kavli, founder and chairman of The Kavli Foundation; Robert W. Conn, president of The Kavli Foundation; and Wegger Chr. Strommen, the Norwegian ambassador to the U.S.

The Kavli Prizes are a partnership between The Kavli Foundation (U.S.), the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

"We are extremely grateful to the president for the honor of this visit, and for his strong and heartfelt commitment to scientific research and discovery," said Fred Kavli. "It reflects the nation's deep support for innovative research that scientists across the country rely upon, including the foundational research discoveries of the 2010 Kavli Laureates."

The Kavli Laureates received their awards for research that made it possible to look more deeply and clearly into the universe, to control matter on the nano scale, and to understand how the brain's nerve cells communicate.

The 2010 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics was awarded to Angel, Nelson and Raymond N. Wilson of the European Southern Observatory in Germany for their contributions to the development of giant telescopes.

The size of a telescope's primary mirror determines the light-gathering power and ability to detect and resolve the faintest and most distant objects in the universe. Nelson, Wilson and Angel pioneered the development of a new generation of large optical telescopes with innovations such as precise reflecting mirrors and more sophisticated shaping that has led to an extraordinary range of fundamental discoveries about the cosmos.

The 2010 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience was awarded to Eigler and Seeman for their development of unprecedented methods to control matter on the nanoscale.

Eigler demonstrated it was possible to pick up and precisely place individual atoms at will, creating a whole field of quantum engineering. Seeman conceived the idea of using DNA as a building material for nanoscale engineering.

Inventing DNA nanotechnology, he pioneered the use of DNA as a non-biological programmable material for a countless number of devices that self-assemble, walk, compute and catalyze. These discoveries promise breakthroughs in future applications in fields ranging from electronics to biology.

The 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience was awarded to Rothman, Scheller and Südhof for discovering the molecular basis of neurotransmitter release. Understanding how nerve cells communicate with one another has been a central problem in modern brain science.

Over the past 30 years, Scheller, Südhof and Rothman have used a creative multidisciplinary set of approaches to elucidate the key molecular events of neurotransmitter release. Moreover, their work has demonstrated that neurotransmitter release represents a special case of the fundamental cell biological process of membrane trafficking.

The Kavli Prize consists of a scroll, a gold medal and a cash award of $1 million in each field, with the prizes awarded biennially. Kavli Prize recipients are chosen by committees comprised of distinguished international scientists recommended by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Society, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society.

After making their selection for Prize recipients, the recommendations are confirmed by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

The formation of Prize Committees and the selection of prize recipients is independent of The Kavli Foundation - a nonprofit U.S.-based foundation dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity, promoting public understanding of scientific research, and supporting scientists and their work.

The 2010 Kavli Prize Laureates were announced last year and received their awards in a ceremony held in Oslo, Norway. The call for nominations for the 2012 Kavli Prizes occurs this fall.

For more information about the Kavli Prizes, visit: www.kavliprize.no and www.kavlifoundation.org.

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Contacts:
The University of Arizona
Office of University Communications
888 N. Euclid Ave. Room 413
Tucson, Arizona 85721
Phone: 520-621-1877
Fax: 520-626-4121

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