Sam Safran, a professor at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, has been chosen as the recipient of the first EPJE - Pierre-Gilles De Gennes Lecture Prize. The prize, accompanied by €1,000, is being awarded by Springer's European Physical Journal E (EPJE). Safran is the author of numerous articles in this journal.
The EPJE - Pierre-Gilles De Gennes Lecture Prize, which was named after the Nobel laureate who founded EPJE, has been awarded to Safran to recognize his leading research in soft matter and biological physics. The prizewinner has been invited to give a lecture at the International Soft Matter Conference 2010 in Granada, Spain. The prize will be presented to Safran at the beginning of his plenary talk on 6 July 2010.
In addition to serving as a professor at the Wiezmann Institute, Safran also served as Vice President and Dean of its Graduate School. From 1980-1990 he was at the Exxon Corporate Research Labs where he worked on the theory of soft matter with a focus on the structure and phase behavior of oil-water-surfactant dispersions. His recent research interests have extended soft matter concepts to treat biological membranes and cells. Safran is a recipient of the Beller Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society and the Lectureship Award of the Japanese Chemical Society.
The European Physical Journal E publishes papers describing advances in the understanding of physical aspects of soft matter and biological systems. This includes reports of experimental, computational and theoretical studies, appealing to the broad interdisciplinary communities including physics, chemistry, biology and materials science.
The European Physical journals (www.epj.org) are international peer-reviewed publications covering the whole spectrum of pure and applied physics, including related interdisciplinary subjects. They are co-published by the Societa' Fisica Italiana, EPD Sciences and Springer and are a continuation of Acta Physica Hungarica, Anales de Fisica, Czechoslovak Journal of Physics, Il Nuovo Cimento, Journal de Physique, Portugaliae Physica and Zeitschrift für Physik.
Springer (www.springer.com) is a leading global scientific publisher of books and journals, delivering quality content through innovative information products and services. It publishes close to 500 academic and professional society journals. Springer is part of the publishing group Springer Science+Business Media.