15-12-2004
	Descartes-Huygens Prize for nanotechnologist Marie-Paule Pileni
	The French nanotechnologist Professor Marie-Paule Pileni is the winner of the 2004 Descartes-Huygens Prize, awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for her pioneering research on nanomaterials. The prize, a grant of EUR 23,000, is intended to cover the costs of a period of research residency in the Netherlands. Prof. Pileni will be working at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology and the Faculty of Technical Sciences at the University of Twente. Marie-Paule Pileni (1945) conducts research into the synthesis of nanomaterials and the organisation and collective properties of nanoparticles. She has worked at the Mesoscopic and Nanometric Materials Laboratory, part of the Pierre & Marie Curie University in Paris, since 1969 and has been a visiting lecturer in Switzerland, Israel, Australia, India, Japan, the US, Germany and other countries. She also holds an honorary doctorate from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. She enjoys international renown in her field and was the most cited French scientist during the period 1981-1998. Marie-Paule Pileni will use the Descartes-Huygens Prize to spend a few months in 2005 and 2006 working as a visiting professor in the Solid-State Physics department of the Faculty of Technical Sciences and the MESA+ Research Institute of the University of Twente. Together with her Dutch colleagues she will research the properties of thin films, i.e. layers synthesised from crystals of nano dimensions. How will the crystals be arranged, and how does their arrangement affect the properties of the material? Prof. Pileni will concentrate specifically on optical and magnetic properties. The films have a great deal of technical potential, for example in information storage and in medical diagnostics. The Academy awards the Descartes-Huygens Prize annually to a prominent French scientist who has made a contribution to the development of Franco-Dutch scientific cooperation. The French government awards the same prize annually to a Dutch scientist to finance a period of research residency in France.

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