Researchers honoured with the 2014 PaperAward for their outstanding scientific publications

The winners of this year’s WITec PaperAwards have been announced. Research groups from the USA, France, and Germany won the PaperAwards in gold, silver, and bronze, respectively. The annual awards honour outstanding scientific publications that feature results acquired with a WITec instrument. Scientists from all over the world submitted more than 60 publications, from between January and December 2013, to this year’s competition. A jury chose the three winning papers from among the submissions to be honoured with a PaperAward. Selection criteria included the impact of scientific results and the innovation of the applied techniques.

The PaperAward 2014 in gold goes to Yufeng Hao. Hao was honoured for his work on graphene in Rodney Ruoffs’ research group at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of Texas, USA. The group successfully collaborated with Luigi Colombos’ laboratory from Texas Instruments and published their work in Science ‘Y. Hao et al., The Role of Surface Oxygen in the Growth of Large Single-Crystal Graphene on Copper’. A confocal Raman image of the publication was also chosen as the cover image for the issue. The scientific paper convinced the jury by demonstrating the beneficial application of confocal Raman imaging for high-impact graphene research. Hao just moved from Texas to New York to start a new position at Columbia University where he continues his work.

The silver WITec PaperAward winners are researchers from the Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, CNRS in France. Frédéric Foucher and Frances Westall published in Astrobiology ‘Foucher and Westall, Raman Imaging of Metastable Opal in Carbonaceous Microfossils of the 700-800 Ma old Draken Formation’. They show comprehensive Raman imaging studies of microfossils from Norway, Canada, and Australia. The jury honoured Foucher and colleague for their successful application of (3D) Raman imaging as part of their compelling scientific work.

The WITec PaperAward in bronze goes to the research group of Maike Windbergs at the Department of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Saarland University, Germany. Windbergs published together with her group member Birthe Kann in the AAPS Journal “Kann and Windbergs, Chemical Imaging of Drug Delivery Systems with Structured Surface – a Combined Analytical Approach of Confocal Raman Microscopy and Optical Profilometry”. Her scientific work in the field of pharmaceutical research demonstrates the successful use of confocal Raman microscopy for the investigation of rough samples in combination with optical profilometry.

WITec recently announced the WITec PaperAward 2015 for publications published in 2014. Researchers from all fields of applications and both academia and industry are invited to submit their publications featuring results acquired with a WITec instrument to papers@witec.de.