Alfons van Blaaderen wins Peter Debye Prize
The Edmond Hustinx Foundation has awarded the Peter Debye Prize 2011 to FOM workgroup leader Prof.dr. Alfons van Blaaderen. This international prize worth 10,000 euros is awarded for cross-disciplinary research in the natural sciences. "Alfons van Blaaderen does outstanding research in the area of colloidal particles and regularly makes contributions to neighbouring research areas." said the jury. The prize will be presented on Thursday 24 March 2011 at 16.00 hours in the city hall of Maastricht.
Van Blaaderen works at Utrecht University on 'soft condensed matter'. This includes materials that are easily deformed under the influence of external fields, such as electrical fields or gravity. Van Blaaderen’s research largely focuses on colloids, miniscule particles that are 100 to 100,000 times smaller than the thickness of a hair. These particles are found, for example, in blood but also in yoghurt and even in cosmetics. The research is increasing our understanding of colloids and is already being applied in electronic ink and shock absorbers, for example.
The jury explicitly praised Van Blaaderen for three important scientific achievements:
- he is the pioneer and developer of quantitative 3D real-space microscopic analysis of colloidal systems and processes;
- he has developed fluorescing silicon core-shell particles and has made the core shell particles approach suitable for many successive material combinations;
- he has developed various new methods to manipulate the self-organisation of colloidal articles, for example, by changing the interactions and by making use of external fields.
According to the jury, these achievements have enabled him to develop into a top international scientist.