OREANDA-NEWS. The list of finalists for RUSNANOPRIZE 2013 award in the field of “Nanomaterials and Surface Modification” was announced in Moscow. Five applications that received the biggest number of votes from international experts have been submitted to the Prize Awarding Committee. The prize-giving will take place on the RUSNANOPRIZE solemn award ceremony that will be held in the frames of Moscow Iinternational Forum for Innovative Development “Open Innovations” on November 1, 2013.

The RUSNANOPRIZE award, established in 2009 by the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (currently RUSNANO) and the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs, aims to draw public attention to the leading scientific developments in nanotechnology which have been applied in industrial production and have proven their practical significance. RUSNANOPRIZE is annually awarded to inventors, scientists and developers who have authored scientific and technological developments in the field of nanotechnologies, as well as companies that have applied the innovations in mass production with an annual volume of at least \\$10M and that achieved commercial success by doing so.

In 2013 the RUSNANOPRIZE international nanotechnology prize will be awarded in the nomination titled “Nanomaterials and Surface Modification”. 38 applications were submitted to the competition, of which 23 passed the preliminary selection.

The absentee voting by the RUSNANOPRIZE Expert Group resulted in comprising a shortlist of five finalists.

A group of Russian and American scientists comprised of Professors Ruslan Valiev, Gordon Langdon and Doctor of Physical and Medical Sciences Georgy Raab presented the project titled “Bulk nanostructured metal materials obtained by methods of severe plastic deformation (SPD)”, applied into the mass production of nanomaterials for medicine and engineering surfaces in Russia. The investment into the project amounts to about \\$500M. Products manufactured using SPD methods are durable, resistant to corrosion and metal fatigue, and surpass the analogous qualities of traditional metals, sometimes-by several times.

The research, measurement and metrological nanometre resolution equipment complex developed by Doctor of Technical Sciences Victor Bykov is based on the technology of scanning probe microscopy and is applied in the production of nanomaterials and their quality control, the development of new semiconducting materials and nanoelectronic devices, as well as in other fields of science and engineering.

The technology of using dispersed elementary particles of detonation-synthesized nanodiamonds, presented by Professors Eiji Osawa, Amanda Barnard and Dean Ho, enables qualities of known materials to be modified and can be used to create medical equipment, machine building and engineering construction.

The 2013 shortlist of the Award also includes a project by Professor Robert Langer, who chaired the last year's RUSNANOPRIZE International Award Committee for medicine, pharmacology and biotechnology, and Doctor Omid Farokhzad. Professor Langer and Doctor Farokhzad are working on the development and industrialization of technologies for using nanoparticles in medicine to enable considerable progress in cancer treatment and brain tumors, which are difficult to treat using traditional methods of therapy.

Nanophase ceramic materials developed by RUSNANOPRIZE 2013 finalist Professor Richard Siegel and produced by Nanophase Technologies are applied in automobile building and electronics, the manufacture of outer coating, windows and plastic, as well as for creating personal hygiene and animal care products.

“The wide application range of the projects nominated for the RUSNANOPRIZE 2013 is a convincing demonstration that nanotechnology is already changing many areas of human life. This is the field that holds hitherto unexplored possibilities for solving global problems of modernity-the fight against poverty, hunger and serious diseases as well as for saving energy and planet ecology”, assures Boris Chichkov, Director of the Nanotechnology Department at Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V.

The 2013 RUSNANOPRIZE Award Committee is comprised of scientists and representatives of innovative business with outstanding achievements in nanomaterials and surface modification: the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Emeritus Professor at the University of Tsukuba (Japan) Hideki Shirakawa, Emeritus Director at the Institute of Nanotechnology of the Research Centre Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) Herbert Gleiter, RAS Academician and Moscow State University Pro-rector (Russia) Alexey Khokhlov, Senior Vice President and Chief Science & Technology Officer at DuPont (USA) Douglas Muzyka, President of Advanced Materials & Systems Research Division at BASF (USA) Christian Fischer, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Alcoa (USA) Raymond Kilmer, Chief Technology Officer at the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (France) Jean Botti, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Volvo Group Global (Sweden) Jan-Eric Sundgren, Vice President at 3M Corporate Research Laboratory (USA) Larry Wendling, Chief Scientist of Physics & Materials at Shell Global (USA) Sergio Kapusta, Professor at the School of Engineering and Materials Science at the Queen Mary University of London (UK) Gleb Sukhorukov, Director of the Nanotechnology Institute at Drexel University (USA) Yury Gogotsi, Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at McMaster University (USA) Igor Zhitomirsky, and Head of the Nanotechnology Department, Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (Germany) Boris Chichkov. The Committee Chairman in 2013, Chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO Anatoly Chubais has been elected by Committee members through secret ballot.

The RUSNANOPRIZE award ceremony will be held at the Moscow International Forum for Innovative Development “Open Innovations”, which will be held on October 31- November 2, 2013 at the Crocus Expo International Exhibition Centre in Moscow.