The Ovshinsky Lectureship Award was established in 2014 in memory of American Inventor and pioneer in the field of Ovonics, Stanford Ovshinsky. The award enjoys the patronage of members of his family, Rosa Ovshinsky, Robin Dibner and Steve Dibner who have asked Dr Alex Kolobov to chair the selection process. The award rules are that (i) the Award can be given only once and (ii) the International Selection Committee is formed from the winners of the previously existing Ovshinsky Award for Excellence in Amorphous Chalcogenides who themselves cannot be nominated for the Lectureship Award. The award is announced prior to the annual E\PCOS conference, and the awardees give the inaugural lecture at this conference.
Winners of the Ovshinsky Lectureship Award generally become members of the International Selection Committee from the year following their nomination.
Presently, members of the International Selection Committee are: Raffaella Calarco (Italy), Marco Bernasconi (Italy), Stephen Elliott (UK), Bart Kooi (the Netherlands), Alexander Kolobov - chairperson (Russia), Abu Sebastian (Switzerland), Harish Bhaskaran (UK), C David Wright (UK), Junji Tominaga (Japan) and Matthias Wuttig (Germany).
2014 | Junji Tominaga- for his innovative ideas in the field of phase-change memory, in particular for the development of Super-RENS optical discs and the interfacial phase-change memory. |
2015 | Toshiyuki Matsunaga- for pioneering structural studies of crystalline and amorphous states of phase-change memory alloys, which created the foundation of the present understanding of the pivotal properties of phase-change materials. |
2016 | Kenkichi Tanioka- in recognition of his work on avalanche multiplication in amorphous selenium resulting in the development of the high-gain avalanche rushing vidicon (HARP) used in highly sensitive colour TV cameras (2016) |
2017 | Raffaella Calarco- in recognition of her work on epitaxial growth of chalcogenide-based phase-change materials and superlattices. |
2018 | Marco Bernasconi- in recognition of the pioneering application of ab-initio simulations to study the amorphous phase of phase-change alloys and also for the development of the neural network potential crucial for simulations of large systems. |
2019 | Abu Sebastian- in recognition of his work on the use of phase-change materials in cognitive computing. |
2021 | Bart Kooi- in recognition of his work on the analyses of phase-change materials using transmission electron microscopy to unravel the structure down to the atomic scale and to monitor dynamic processes in thin films, nanoparticles and devices. |
2022 | The Award has been conferred jointly on Harish Bhaskaran in recognition for his work on neuromorphic computation and photonic devices based on phase-change materials and C David Wright in recognition for his work on non-von Neumann computing using phase-change materials and on the development of phase-change optical metasurfaces. |
2023 | Daniele Ielmini- Politecnico di Milano, IT: in recognition of his work on phase change memory technology: from emerging to emerged |