Each award is intended to recognise and promote outstanding achievements of young scientists in the field physical sciences research, to support their career development
Oxford Instruments Superconductivity has initiated the search for potential winners of its 2006 science prizes.
The company has announced the call for nominations for its Lee-Osheroff-Richardson prize in North America and Nicholas Kurti prize in Europe.
The assessment of candidates for the Sir Martin Wood prize in Japan is already in progress.
The prizes, sponsored by Oxford Instruments, involved in the supply of low temperature and high magnetic field environments for scientific research, are aimed at young scientists.
Each award is intended to recognise and promote outstanding achievements of young scientists in the field physical sciences research, to support their career development.
The North American prize for physics, endorsed by the British Embassy Washington DC, is named after David Lee, Douglas Osheroff, and Robert Richardson, who were joint winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996, for their discovery of superfluidity in 3He.
Christian Lupien from Sherbrooke University is the inaugural 2005 recipient of the Lee-Osheroff-Richardson North American prize.
Lupien is recognised for a record of sustained achievement covering his postgraduate and postdoctoral research in which he worked at the forefront of experimental low temperature metals physics.
His most recent research at Cornell University resulted in groundbreaking low temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) measurements.
This revealed the nature of a new charge ordered state in a transition metal oxychloride.
The European prize for physics is named after Professor Nicholas Kurti who is known for his distinguished work in ultra-low temperature physics at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University.
Silvano De Franceschi from TASC-INFM in Trieste is the inaugural 2005 recipient of the Nicholas Kurti European prize.
De Franceschi is recognised for a record of sustained achievements in the field of quantum transport.
Among his most notable contributions are his post-doctoral work at Delft University of Technology that resulted in highly innovative results on Kondo effects in semiconductor nanostructures and his research work on hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanostructures.
The recipient of the 2004 Sir Martin Wood prize is Yuzo Ohno of RIEC Tohoku University, Sendai for his groundbreaking work in the emerging field of spintronics (spinbased electronics).
The Millennium Science Forum established the Sir Martin Wood prize in 1998.
The role of the forum is to promote scientific exchange between Britain and Japan and recognise the work of outstanding young Japanese researchers.
The prize is named after Martin Wood, founder of Oxford Instruments.
Each prize is awarded annually.
Nominations are now being invited for the 2006 North America and European Science prizes.
Information required for nomination of candidates includes the theme of the candidate's research work, summary of achievements, details of up to three peer reviewed publications and of two supporting referees.
The deadline for submission of nominations is 30 September 2005.
Winners are selected based on criteria covering the quality and originality of their research, the significance of results, impact of the work in setting a new direction for the research field and the degree of leadership demonstrated by the nominee.
The 2006 prize awards will be announced in March 2006.
