The Robert B. Sosman Award is the highest recognition of scientific accomplishment given by the Basic Science Division and is given in recognition of outstanding achievement in basic science of an area that results in a significant impact to the field of ceramics.
The awardee presents a plenary lecture at the ACerS Spring Meeting, and receives a certificate commemorating the event and a piece of glassware. The lecture is given each year by the awardee who has been deemed by the award committee to have made the most significant contribution to the field of ceramics.
Contact
Contact: BSD Leadership
Email completed form to Erica Zimmerman at ezimmerman@ceramics.org.
Award Winners
Sossina M. Haile
Sossina M. Haile is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, where she also holds appointments in Applied Physics and in Chemistry. She assumed her position at Northwestern University in 2015 after serving 18 years on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology. She earned her S.B. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her M.Sc. in the same field in 1988 from the University of California, Berkeley. She returned to MIT to earn her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1992. As part of her studies, she spent two years at the Max Plank Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany, first as a Fulbright Fellow then as a Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellow. Haile’s research broadly encompasses oxide materials for electrochemical energy technologies. Amongst her many awards, in 2008 Haile received an American Competitiveness and Innovation (ACI) Fellowship from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the 2021 Navrotsky Award in Experimental Thermodynamics of the American Ceramics Society, the 2012 International Prize in Ceramics of the World Academy of Ceramics, and the 2010 Chemical Pioneers Award of the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Haile is a fellow of the American Ceramics Society, the Materials Research Society, the Electrochemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the African Academy of Sciences, and the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. She serves on the editorial boards of Joule and MRS Energy and Sustainability and also serves on the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Board.