Congratulations to this year’s 2021 FEMS award winners.

The awards were as follows:

• FEMS European Materials Gold Medal – Prof José Manuel Torralba
• FEMS Materials Innovation Prize – Prof Elvira Fortunato
• FEMS Materials Science & Technology Prize – Dr Idalina José Monteiro Gonçalves

Speaking of his award, Jose Torralba says, ‘I am very honored to be awarded with the FEMS Gold Metal, but also overwhelmed. All previous winners are a reference in my academic career. To belong to the same list is to me much more than a prize. It is another reason to still work hard in this exciting field.’

Elvira added, ‘It was with great joy and surprise to win the FEMS Materials Innovation Prize award, and in particular because I had been awarded an area related to functional and sustainable materials, such as electronics based on metal oxides. Scientists in the field of materials science play a fundamental role in the choice of materials and technologies for the emerging solutions that the planet is facing.’

‘Honoured to be awarded the FEMS Materials Science and Technology prize’, Idalina says, ‘This will further motivate me to work on turning bioplastics derived from agri-food by-products into a reality, which hopefully will have a great impact on the community and help to contribute to a real circular bioeconomy.’

Thanks to this year’s judges Prof Eric Le Bourhis, President of FEMS, Dr Anna Zervaki, Vice President of FEMS, Prof Paloma Fernández-Sánchez, Past President and FEMS Executive Committee members, Prof Paula Vilarinho and Dr Gerhard Hackl.

President of FEMS, Prof Eric Le Bourhis, commented on this year’s awards stating, ‘It was a great pleasure to judge this year’s awards. I should thank the societies for the excellent nominations received. It reveals very active materials research within our federation. I congratulate the awardees and look forward to their presentations at FEMS EUROMAT next September.’

To find out more about the FEMS awards, visit www.fems.org/awards