Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology

The Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology is an award given by the Foresight Institute every year for significant advancements in nanotechnology. It is named in honor of physicist Richard Feynman, whose 1959 talk There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom is considered to have inspired the beginning of the field of nanotechnology.

The prize was established "to recognize researchers whose recent work has most advanced the field toward the achievement of Feynman's vision for nanotechnology: molecular manufacturing, the construction of atomically precise products through the use of molecular machine systems."^[1]

The Foresight Institute also offers the Feynman Grand Prize, a $250,000 award to the first persons to create both a nanoscale robotic arm capable of precise positional control, and a nanoscale 8-bit adder, conforming to given specifications. The Grand Prize is intended to stimulate the field of molecular nanotechnology in the same way as similar historical prizes such as the Longitude prize, Orteig Prize, Kremer prize, Ansari X Prize, and two prizes that were offered by Richard Feynman himself as challenges during his 1959 There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom talk.^[2]

The Foresight Institute has offered a number of additional awards as well. The Prize in Communication for journalism and outreach efforts which promote public understanding of molecular nanotechnology was awarded from 2000 to 2007, and a Government Prize to recognize government officials was awarded in 2005. A Distinguished Student Award for graduate and undergraduate students was awarded from 1997 to 2007, and resumed in 2012.^[3][4]

Feynman prize winners

The prize was first given in 1993. Before 1997, one prize was given biennially. From 1997 on, two prizes were given each year in Theory and Experimental categories.

Single prize

Year	Laureate		Institution	Rationale
1993		Charles Musgrave	California Institute of Technology	"for his work on modeling a hydrogen abstraction tool useful in nanotechnology"[5]
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"[6]

Experimental category

Year	Laureate		Institution	Rationale
1997		James K. Gimzewski	IBM Zurich Research Laboratory	"for work using scanning probe microscopes to manipulate molecules"[7]
		Reto Schlittler
		Christian Joachim	CEMES/French National Centre for Scientific Research
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"[8]
1999		Phaedon Avouris	IBM Watson Research Center	"[for] the development of carbon nanotubes for potential computing device applications"[9]
2000		R. Stanley Williams	HP Labs	"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"[10]
		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"[11]
2002		Chad 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"[12]
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"[13]
2004		Homme Hellinga	Duke University	"for his achievement in the engineering of atomically precise devices capable of precise manipulation of other molecular structures"[14]
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"[15]
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"[16]
		Paul W. K. Rothemund
2007		J. 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"[17]
2008		James Tour	Rice University	"for the Synthesis of Nanocars... and other molecular machines [which] is providing critical insight in investigations of bottom-up molecular manufacturing"[18]
2009		Yoshiaki Sugimoto	Osaka University	"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"[19]
		Masayuki Abe
		Oscar Custance	Japanese National Institute for Materials Science
2010		Masakazu Aono	MANA Center, Japanese National Institute for Materials Science	"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"[1]
2011		Leonhard Grill	Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society	"in recognition of his pioneering and continuing work on manipulating and structuring functional matter at the atomic scale"[20]
2012		Gerhard Meyer	IBM Zurich Research Laboratory	"[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."[21]
		Leo Gross
		Jascha Repp
2013		Alexander Zettl	University of California, Berkeley	"[for] 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"[22]
2014		Joseph W. Lyding	University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign	"[for being] a pioneer in the development of scanning tunneling microscope (STM) technology and particularly hydrogen depassivation lithography"[23]

Theory category

Year	Laureate		Institution	Rationale
1997		Charles Bauschlicher	NASA Ames Research Center	"for work in computational nanotechnology"[7]
		Stephen Barnard
		Creon Levit
		Glenn Deardorff
		Al Globus
		Jie Han
		Richard Jaffe
		Alessandra Ricca
		Marzio Rosi
		Deepak Srivastava
		H. Thuemmel
1998		Ralph C. Merkle	Zyvex	"for their computational modeling of molecular tools for atomically-precise chemical reactions"[8]
		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"[9]
		Tahir Cagin
		Yue Qi
2000		Uzi Landman	Georgia Institute of Technology	"for his pioneering work in computational materials science for nanostructures"[10]
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"[11]
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"[12]
2003		Marvin L. Cohen	University of California, Berkeley	"for their contributions to the understanding of the behavior of materials"[13]
		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"[14]
		Brian Kuhlman	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
2005		Christian Joachim	French National Centre for Scientific Research	"for developing theoretical tools and establishing the principles for design of a wide variety of single molecular functional nanomachines"[15]
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"[16]
		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"[17]
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"[18]
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"[19]
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"[1]
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"[20]
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."[21]
2013		David Beratan	Duke University	"[for the] development of theoretical approaches to understand the function of complex molecular and macromolecular assemblies and machines."[22]
2014		Amanda Barnard	Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation	"[for] spearhead[ing] understanding of the structure and stability of carbon nanostructures, and the role that shape plays in establishing the properties and interactions under different conditions"[23]

Related prizes

Foresight Institute Prize in Communication

Year	Laureate		Institution	Rationale
2000		Ron Dagani	American Chemical Society	"for extensive coverage of nanotechnology and nanotechnology-related research over the past three years in Chemical & Engineering News"[24]
2001		Ivan Abel Amato	Science Service	"[for] work for Science News and Science magazines... [including] orchestrated a special series of essays, called 'Pathways of Discovery'"[25]
2002		David Pescovitz	University of California, Berkeley	"[for work as] a columnist with Small Times, a magazine covering nanotech developments"[26]
2003		Tim Harper	Cientifica	"for educating the nanotechnology community about the long-term potential of molecular nanotechnology... via their electronic newsletter, TNT Weekly, and industry survey, The Nanotechnology Opportunity Report"[27]
		Paul Holister
2004		Howard Lovy	NanoBot Blog	"[for having] taken a leading role in educating the nanotechnology community about the long-term potential of molecular nanotechnology"[28]
2005		Rocky Rawstern	Nanotechnology Now	"[for] provid[ing] a digital forum where accurate information about the transformative aspects of science, technology and engineering is available"[29]
2006		J. Storrs Hall	none	"for his recently published book Nanofuture: What's Next For Nanotechnology"[30]
2007		Robert Freitas	Institute for Molecular Manufacturing	"for [writing] Nanomedicine, the definitive book on the medical applications of molecular nanotechnology... and Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines, the foundational description of system architectures for molecular nanotechnology"[31]

Foresight Institute Government Prize

Year	Laureate		Institution	Rationale
2005		Mike Honda	United States House of Representatives	"[for being] one of the key legislators that initiated the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act signed by President Bush in 2003... [and] the driver of the Nanomanufacturing Investment Act (HR1491)"[32]

See also

• Kavli Prize in Nanoscience
• IEEE Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology
• ISNSCE Nanoscience Award
• UPenn NBIC Award for Research Excellence in Nanotechnology

References

External links

• Foresight Nanotech Institute Prize
• List of past winners and explanation of the prize