The Materials Research Society (MRS) has named Nicola Spaldin, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (ETH Zürich), to receive the Mid-Career Researcher Award “for creating a new theoretical framework describing multiferroics and for service to the materials community.” Spaldin will be recognized during the Award Ceremony at the 2017 MRS Spring Meeting in Phoenix, Ariz., but will deliver her presentation at the 2017 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston. The Mid-Career Research Award, endowed by MilliporeSigma (Sigma-Aldrich Materials Science), recognizes exceptional achievements in materials research made by mid-career researchers.

Spaldin holds the Chair for Materials Theory at ETH Zürich, where her research group studies the fundamentals of strongly correlated materials. Her work combines the development of new theoretical electronic structure techniques, understanding unusual behavior in existing materials, and design and synthesis of new materials based on the insights gained from the research. The group’s particular focus is the design of contraindicated multifunctional materials that combine multiple, technologically desirable functionalities that tend not to coexist. Spaldin is particularly renowned for her development of the class of materials known as multiferroics, which combine simultaneous ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity, and for exploring their application in areas ranging from device physics to cosmology.

Spaldin studied natural sciences at the University of Cambridge, where she obtained her BA degree, received her PhD degree in chemistry at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and was a postdoctoral researcher in applied physics at Yale University before starting her career in the Materials Department at UC Santa Barbara. Awards include the 2017 Lise Meitner Award of the German and Austrian Physical Societies, the 2017 L’OREAL/UNESCO for Women in Science Award, the 2015 Körber European Science Prize, the 2014 ETH Golden Owl Award for Teaching Excellence, and the 2010 APS McGroddy Prize for New Materials. She is the proud former advisor of this year’s Outstanding Young Investigator Award winner, James Rondinelli.