Lars Hultman

Lars Hultman is the Chief Executive Officer at the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. He is also professor and head of the Thin Film Physics Division at the Department of Physics, IFM, Linköping University, Sweden. He received his PhD in materials science in 1988 from Linköping, did a post-doc at Northwestern University in 1989-1990, and was a visiting professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign during 2004-2006. He is the director of Center-of-Excellence programs on the materials science and nanotechnology of functional ceramic thin films funded by different Swedish and European Funding Agencies.

He has published more than 500 papers with 10,000 independent citations, and holds more than 10 patents. With a Hirsch index of 58, he is an ISI Most Cited Researcher. In recent years he has published five times in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. He has been awarded the IUVSTA-Welch Scholarship, the Jacob Wallenberg Foundation Award for Materials Science, and European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. In 2003, he was announced Excellent Researcher by the Swedish Research Council. As its Editor-in-Chief, he leads the transformation of VACUUM into a rapid-communications journal. Hultman is further Fellow of the American Vacuum Society, Fellow of the Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Elected Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). In 2011, Lars Hultman was named Wallenberg Scholar.

Prof. Hultman is a leader in materials research and nanoscience of nitrides, carbides and oxides. His interests range from epitaxial films to superlattices and nanocomposites, oxidation and wear-resistant coatings, and optoelectronics. Focus is placed on driving research towards advanced materials, surface functionalization, and self-organization on the nanoscale generating benefits to society by developing enhanced vapor-based synthesis techniques while strengthening the current infrastructure via unprecedented facilities for spectroscopy and microscopy. Lars’ hobbies are mineral collecting, skiing, running, and golf.