Barsoum.
Michel W. Barsoum, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Department of
Materials Science and Engineering, has been named a
2023 National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow
.
Election as an Academy Fellow is the highest professional distinction
awarded to academic inventors. Fellows are selected for demonstrating “a
highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating
outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of
life, economic development, and welfare of society.” Barsoum and the other
new Fellows will be honored and presented their medals at the 13th Annual
Meeting of the National Academy of Inventors on June 18, 2024 in Raleigh,
North Carolina.
“Becoming a member of NAI is a great honor and is both thrilling and
humbling,” Barsoum said. “This recognition is one I share with the
talented, creative and inspired students I have taught over the years,
Drexel University, and my colleagues in the States and abroad. I have always
worked to be relevant in my quest to make discoveries that could improve our
world in some small way, and I am thus grateful for this acknowledgement.”
Barsoum, an internationally recognized leader in MAX phases and MXenes
materials research, has had profound impacts across materials science. With
over 550 publications and over 100,000 citations, he has made seminal
contributions like discovering the ripplocation deformation mechanism in
layered solids and the MAX phases in 1996. The MAX phases are the precursors
to MXene; without the former phases, there would be no MXenes. His PhD
student, Michael Naguib, discovered MXenes in 2011. The latter are
two-dimensional materials that have sparked a global research frenzy
because of the myriad applications they are being considered for.
He is among the world's most highly cited researchers in Materials Science,
evidenced by numerous honors including election as Foreign Member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, Fellow of the American
Ceramic Society, the 2020 International Ceramics Prize for basic science
from the World Academy of Ceramics, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.
The 2022 NAI Fellow class hails from 110 research universities,
governmental and non-profit research institutions worldwide. They
collectively hold over 5,000 issued U.S. patents. Among the new class of
Fellows are members of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and
Medicine; Fellows of AAAS; and other prestigious organizations; Nobel
Laureates; other honors and distinctions as well as senior leadership from
universities and research institutions. The full list of 2022 Fellows
can be found here
.