This award recognizes the most valuable contribution to ceramic technical literature during the calendar year two years prior to selection.
The Purdy award shall be given to the author or authors who, in the judgment of the committee, made the most valuable contribution to ceramic technical literature published two years prior to the selection year. The 2026 Purdy award will be given to the author(s) of a paper published in 2024. A technical article is defined as a paper involving original work on ceramic materials that is published in a ceramic science and engineering journal, or a science journal that includes papers on the topic of ceramic science and engineering.
The winner(s) shall receive a certificate, medallion bearing the likeness of Ross Coffin Purdy. If the technical article selected has been written by more than one author, each shall receive a duplicate award and diploma.
Nomination Process
Members of The American Ceramic Society can nominate papers from any science journal that includes papers on ceramic science and engineering. Submissions can be made through the Awards Portal on the ACerS website. In addition, the editors of the three ACerS-Wiley journals will recommend papers for the award.
Award Namesake
Ross Coffin Purdy, in whose honor this award is given, served The American Ceramic Society for 24 years as General Secretary and Editor of its publications. He was the recipient of many awards, a Fellow and Honorary Life Member, and President of the Society. Mr. Purdy was noted for his dynamic leadership, individualism, broad vision, and unswerving devotion to the Society and to the ceramic engineering profession.
Contact
Erica Zimmerman
ezimmerman@ceramics.org
Award Winners
2026 Awardee
Fang X. “Mechanical tailoring of dislocations in ceramics at room temperature: A perspective” J Am Ceram Soc. 2024;107:1425–1447
Xufei Fang
Xufei Fang obtained his Bachelor degree (2011.06) and Ph.D. degree (2016.01) in Solid Mechanics at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. From 2016-2019, he worked as an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow on hydrogen embrittlement of metals with Prof. Gerhard Dehm at Max Planck Institute for Iron Research (now for Sustainable Materials) in Düsseldorf, Germany. Between 2019-2024, he was an independent group leader (Athene Young Investigator, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany) in the Ceramics Group of Prof. Jürgen Rödel, with whom he also finished his Habilitation on “dislocations in ceramics” in 2024.05. Since 2024.04, he has started a full-time permanent group leader position at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in the Institute for Applied Materials – Mechanics of Materials and Interfaces, headed by Prof. Christoph Kirchlechner. Between 2021.08-2025.03, he was a guest associate professor at the Department of Mechanical Science and Bioengineering, The University of Osaka, Japan. At this same institute, he has been promoted to a guest professor since 2025.04.
At KIT, Dr. Fang currently leads two research groups: Dislocations in Ceramics (ERC-Starting Grant, independent PI) and Hydrogen Micromechanics (ERC-Consolidator Grant, PI: Prof. C. Kirchlechner). Besides the prestigious ERC-Starting Grant, he has received several other awards for his team’s research, including the Robert W. Cahn Best Paper Award (Springer, 2021), J. Am. Ceram. Soc.’s inaugural 2nd Century Trailblazer (2023), Roland B. Snow Award (Best of Show, ACerS Basic Science Division, 2023 & 2024), and the Masing Memorial Prize (DGM, German Society for Materials Science, 2026).
In addition to research, Dr. Fang is enthusiastic about teaching fundamental courses in ceramics, for which he was awarded the Athene Prize for Good Teaching (TU Darmstadt, 2023).