Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory won three national awards for DOE research in material sciences.

“It’s a testimony to the quality of the scientific work done at Ames Laboratory that three of the nine material sciences awards were won in competition with 13 much larger labs,” said Bruce Thompson, associate director for science and technology at the lab, located on the Iowa State campus.

Thompson said Ames Lab was awarded a disproportionately large share of the awards in contrast to the amount of federal funding the lab receives.

“We received a third of the awards where as our fraction of the funding is less than a tenth. This should justifiably be a matter of local pride,” he said.

Thompson said materials sciences receives a lot of national attention.

“A lot of federal agencies worry about what sorts of technologies they should invest in. Material sciences is one of those critical technologies,” he said. “These are very highly respected people on the national scene right at the forefront of a technical area that is recognized as being of significant national interest.”

A team of 11 Ames Lab researchers won the DOE Materials Sciences Award for outstanding scientific accomplishment in solid-state physics for their investigation of the electronic and magnetic properties of single-crystal, rare-earth nickel-boro-carbide superconductors.

Paul Canfield, a member of the research team, said a collaborative effort is needed to define and solve major problems in physics today. He said, “The presence of a DOE lab fosters precisely this type of collaboration.”

A team of four researchers was also rewarded for sustained outstanding research in solid-state physics. They won the award for studies of the structure of properties of quasicrystals, a new class of recently discovered solids.

“The effort that resulted in this award is characteristic of the outstanding collaborations that can develop at a small national laboratory,” said Alan Goldman, head of the research team.

Senior Chemist John Corbett, a professor of chemistry, won an award for “sustained outstanding research” in material chemistry.

Thompson said Corbett is a respected researcher nationwide, and his research results have been published in several science magazines and Time magazine. Corbett was recently named to the National Academy of Sciences.

Corbett took little credit for the award.

“Some very clever graduate students and postdocs deserve most of the credit. I just keep pointing them in certain directions,” he said.

Thompson said professors and full-time research scientists develop most of the strategies for research used in the lab, and graduate students carry out the work.

The awards are administered and evaluated by material scientists at the DOE’s headquarters in Washington and at the 14 competing national research laboratories.