In a lecture on Monday night, Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman will discuss how technological innovation could lead to world peace and prosperity.

Shechtman received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011 for his discovery of quasicrystals, crystalline structures that are “ordered but not periodic.”

Although he originally published a paper about his findings on quasicrystals in 1984, his discovery was denied by the scientific community for years. His work was finally validated when the Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences deemed it worthy of the Nobel Prize.

In 2004, Shechtman joined forces with Iowa State as a professor of materials science and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory.

But he spends less than half a year in Ames as he is also the Philip Tobias Distinguished Professor of Materials Science at the Israel Institute of Technology. The rest of his year is spent at this location.

Prior to winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Shechtman had won 11 other awards in the areas of science and engineering.