Troy, N.Y. — Martin E. Glicksman, the John Tod Horton Professor of Materials Engineering at Rensselaer, was selected as a recipient of a coveted Humboldt Senior Research Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany.

As part of his prize, Glicksman will conduct research in Germany for two six-month periods in 2002 and 2003. He will meet the German president in a ceremony this July.

Glicksman was recognized for his lifelong research in materials processing, including metals solidification, crystal growth of electronic materials, microgravity science, and control of microstructures. Glicksman developed Rensselaer's Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE), featuring a series of microgravity crystal growth experiments successfully flown on space shuttle missions in 1994, 1996, and 1997. Applications of the IDGE results will help to improve productivity in the metals industry.

Prior to joining the Rensselaer faculty, Glicksman was a researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Metallurgy Division, then associate superintendent of the NRL's Solid State Division. He established NRL's Transformations and Kinetics Branch in 1967.

Glicksman received his bachelor's in metallurgical engineering in 1957 and his doctorate in 1961 in physical metallurgy, both from Rensselaer. He joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1975 as chair of the materials science and engineering department, and over the next 10 years helped Rensselaer develop new academic and research programs in electronic materials processing. In 1986 he was named the John Tod Horton '52 Professor of Materials Engineering.

Glicksman is a fellow of the Metallurgical Society, the American Society for Materials, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a member of the American Physical Society and the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1996.

He has received numerous awards throughout his career, including NASA's Award for Technical Excellence and the National Space Processing Award of AIAA for his work on IDGE.