The Surface Structure Prize is awarded to one (or jointly to two or three) scientist(s), for an outstanding body of work in the field of surface and interface structure. For joint awards, the bodies of work must be closely related, such as in close collaborations or competing developments. The selected work is presented by the awardee(s) as an invited lecture at the ICSOS meeting.

Nominations must include sufficient justification for evaluation and selection. They are accepted from all scientists in the field of surface science and, together with supporting documentation, must be submitted to the chair of the prize committee via e-mail (Michael Schmid, schmid@iap.tuwien.ac.at) before 2025-Jan-15.

From all nominations submitted in time, the Price Selection Committee will select the best candidate who will present an invited lecture at the ICSOS-14 meeting.

The ICSOS Young Scientist Prize is awarded to an applicant who has recently (within the last three years) received a doctoral degree, or a current doctoral student who is expecting to finish his/her degree within one year after the current ICSOS, in the field of surface and interface structure.

Applicants for the Young Scientist Prize have to submit a proposal for a contributed talk at ICSOS-14, and indicate in the abstract submission form that they apply for the prize. Additionally, a signed statement by the student's doctoral and/or postdoctoral supervisor has to be submitted, certifying that the submitted work was performed by the applicant, describing the applicant's level and quality of contributions, and giving the (past or expected) degree award date. This statement shall be sent to the chair of the ICSOS Executive Committee (christian.kumpf@fz-juelich.de) before the abstract submission deadline. The application should also include a publication list of the applicant containing the citation(s) that are relevant for the presented work. The application deadline is identical to the abstract submission deadline for contributed talks and posters.

For selecting the winner, a Prize Committee is formed, chaired by the Vice Chair of the Executive Committee, Junfa Zhu, who appoints the other committee members. On the basis of the submitted proposal and the related documents, the Prize Committee will pre-select several (up to five) proposals for oral presentation at the conference. The final decision on the prize winner will then be made by the Prize Committee during the conference. The award is to be announced and the prize to be given before the end of the conference.

ICSOS Surface Structure Prize Winners

John B. Pendry (1996)
"for his far-reaching, diverse, fundamental and practical contributions to the field of quantitative surface structure determination"
1999    Kunio Takayanagi
"for outstanding achievement in the field of surface and interface structure"

Franco P. Jona, Paul M. Marcus and Don W. Jepsen (2002)
"for their pioneering contributions in surface structure determination, which led to the era of quantitative low-energy electron diffraction (LEED), i.e., the determination of atomic structure in the outer layers of crystals by analysis of LEED intensity spectra"

D. Phillip Woodruff (2005)
"for outstanding achievement in the field of surface and interface structure"

Michel A. Van Hove (2008)
"in recognition of his outstanding contribution to surface structure determination, particularly by the technique of low energy electron diffraction, through the development, application and free distribution of multiple scattering codes, and for his eminent role in establishing the ICSOS conference series and the 'Surface Structure Database'"

Ian K. Robinson (2011)
"for his pioneering work on Crystal Truncation Rods which has played a vital role in the development of surface structure analysis by X-ray diffraction, and its extensions to the active study of other phenomena including surface phase transitions, crystal growth and buried interfaces"

Klaus Heinz (2014)
"for his outstanding contributions to the development and application of LEED-based methods to solve a vast array of surface structural problems"

Laurence Marks (2017)
"for his outstanding and highly influential contribution to surface structure determination applying both experimental and theoretical methods"

Michael Schmid (2023)
"for his outstanding achievements in the development and application of methods to elucidate the structure of the surfaces of metal alloys, surface oxides, bulk oxides and single atom catalysts"

ICSOS Young Scientist Prize Winners

Roman Fasel (University of Fribourg), 1996
Peter Broekmann (University of Bonn), 1999
Tetsuroh Shirasawa (Kyushu University), 2005
Christian Fink (University of Cambridge) & Joseph Smerdon (University of Liverpool), 2008
April D. Jewell (Tufts University), 2011
Sam Jarvis (University of Nottingham), 2014
Björn Arndt (University of Hamburg), 2017
Anja Haags (University of Bonn), 2023