My congratulations to my friends Doron and David for the recognition to their outstanding work
The Israel Chemical Society (ICS) awarded its 2011
Prize of Excellence to Doron Aurbach (Bar-Ilan
University) and David Cahen (Weizmann Institute
of Science).
Doron Aurbach was honored for “his seminal
research on non-aqueous chemistry, development
of rechargeable magnesium batteries, and for the
development of novel spectro-electrochemical
tools for the studies of reactive electrochemical
systems”. Aurbachs research group also works on
lithium-ion batteries, electronically conducting polymers,
supercapacitors, and devices for energy
storage and conversion. He has reported on a
material for lithium-ion batteries in Angewandte
Chemie,[1a] and on the role of anion desorption in
carbon micropores in ChemPhysChem.[1b] Aurbach
studied at Bar-Ilan University and received his PhD
in physico-organic chemistry in 1983 (supervised by
S. Hoz). After two years of postdoctoral research at
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland,
USA) with E. B. Yeager, he founded the electrochemistry
group at Bar-Ilan University at the end of
1985. Aurbachs other honors include the Electrochemical
Society Battery Division Technology
Award (2005). He has been a fellow of the Electrochemical
Society since 2008 and the International
Electrochemical Society since 2010.
David Cahen was awarded for “his seminal
contributions to the chemistry and physics of
photovoltaic materials and devices, such as solar
cells, and for providing means for controlling their
optical and electronic properties”. His current
research interests are in materials chemistry, in
particular the electronic properties of interfaces,
and the use of biomolecules in optoelectronics. He
has recently discussed the possibilities and limits
for solar cells in Advanced Materials,[2a] and has
reported on electronic contact deposition onto
organic monolayers in Advanced Functional Materials.[
2b] Cahen studied chemistry and physics at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned his
PhD in chemistry and materials research at Northwestern
University (Evanston, USA) in 1973 (with
J. A. Ibers and J. B. Wagner, Jr.). He pursued
postdoctoral research in biological photosynthesis
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (with I.
Ohad) and at the Weizmann Institute of Science
(with S. Malkin), which he joined as a faculty
member in 1976. He was promoted to professor in
1998. Among other awards, Cahen received the
Kolthoff Prize from the Technion–Israel Institute
of Technology (2009).
[1] a) S. K. Martha, J. Grinblat, O. Haik, E. Zinigrad, T.
Drezen, J. H. Miners, I. Exnar, A. Kay, B. Markovsky,
D. Aurbach, Angew. Chem. 2009, 121, 8711 – 8715;
b) M. D. Levi, S. Sigalov, G. Salitra, D. Aurbach, J.
Maier, ChemPhysChem 2011, 12, 854.
[2] a) P. K. Nayak, J. Bisquert, D. Cahen, Adv. Mater.
2011, 23, 2870; b) H. Shpaisman, R. Har-Lavan, N.
Stein, O. Yaffe, R. Korobko, O. Seitz, A. Vilan, D.
Cahen, Adv. Func. Mater. 2010, 20, 2181.