Materials Professor C.N.R. Rao

C.N.R. Rao, distinguished visiting professor in the Materials Research Lab (MRL) at UC Santa Barbara, has received the Dan David Prize, an international award endowed by the Dan David Foundation headquartered at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

The $1 million Dan David Prize, which Rao shares with Harvard University chemist George Whitesides and chemical engineer Robert Langer of MIT, is considered by many to be the Nobel Prize of Israel. The prize recognizes and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms.

It aims to foster universal values of excellence, creativity, justice, democracy, and progress, and to promote the scientific, technological, and humanistic achievements that advance and improve the world.

Rao also recently received the Indian Science Award, the most important science prize in his homeland of India, where he is chair of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He has spent one month a year at UCSB for the last 10 years.

Last year, he shared the Somiya Award of the International Union of Materials Research Societies with Tony Cheetham, former director of the MRL. He chairs the advisory board of UCSB’s new International Center for Materials Research.

According to Craig Hawker, the new director of the MRL, Rao is a world-renowned authority in the field of materials chemistry. His contributions to the field of solid state chemistry and materials science are remarkable for their diversity and their originality. Rao is the Linus Pauling Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India.