▲ Rodney S. (Rod) Ruoff, Distinguished Professor at the UNIST and Director of the IBS-CMCM

Rodney S. (Rod) Ruoff, Distinguished Professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Director of the Institute for Basic Science Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials (IBS-CMCM), has been awarded the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society in recognition of his outstanding achievement in the science and application of new materials. Professor Ruoff has made and reported many scientific discoveries, and this prize was awarded “for pioneering contributions to the scalable synthesis, materials science and applications of graphene and graphene derivatives.” The prize will be awarded to Ruoff at the 2018 Spring Meeting of the American Physical Society to be held March 5-9, 2018 in Los Angeles, California, USA. Ruoff will also present an award lecture at this scientific meeting.

Ruoff and his research team first published on graphene in 1999 in two peer-reviewed articles; one in the Journal of Applied Physics and the other in the journal Nanotechnology. Since then, he and co-authors have published many peer-reviewed articles in a variety of scientific journals on pioneering discoveries about graphene and derivatives. Google Citations notes that Ruoff’s publications have been cited over 141,000 times; five of his papers have been cited more than 5,000 times, and twenty-five have been cited over 1,000 times. Ruoff is considered by many to be the most prolific researcher in the widest range of scientific discoveries on graphene and graphene derivatives. His published research is also considered to be the most impactful in driving the rapidly expanding worldwide research and development of graphene and graphene derivatives, such as graphene oxide, reduced graphene oxide, functionalized graphene, and graphene grown on metal foils by chemical vapor deposition. In addition to being author or co-author of 470 peer-reviewed scientific publications, Ruoff is also an inventor or co-inventor on 43 patents.

Rod Ruoff received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1988. Prior to joining UNIST in January 2014, he was Cockrell Family Regents Chair Professor at UT Austin (2007-2013) and John Evans Chair Professor at Northwestern University (2000-2007). He directs the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, an IBS Center located at the UNIST campus in Ulsan, South Korea, that currently has over 100 students and professional researchers creating and studying a variety of carbon and related materials.

“I thank the American Physical Society for awarding me this prize, and my gratitude extends to the many talented students, postdocs, and collaborating scientists and engineers that I have been fortunate to work with. This award also serves to remind me that there is still so much to do. We aim for new and pioneering discoveries in the future, including on many carbon and related materials, while continuing to contribute in new ways on the specific carbon material graphene.”