Professor Paul Ayers has been awarded a prestigious E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, in a ceremony hosted by the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, in Ottawa on February 27.  Prof. Ayers won the award, which is one of Canada’s top scientific honours, for his world-leading contributions to the derivation, implementation, and application of concepts derived from Density Functional Theory. His many contributions, which are embodied in close to 200 publications to date, range from the purely mathematical, to algorithms and computer programming, to applications. 

Up to six E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships are awarded by NSERC each year, to enhance the career development of outstanding and highly promising scientists and engineers under the age of 40 at Canadian universities.  Tenable for a two-year period, the award relieves Fellows of teaching and administrative duties so that all their time and energy can be devoted to research.  Steacie Fellows also receive a two-year, $250,000 research grant and are invited to submit an application to the Research Tools and Instruments Grants program for equipment.

Paul is the second McMaster chemist to win a Steacie Memorial Fellowship in its 49-year history.  The first was the late Prof. Richard F.W. Bader, another of Canada’s most prominent theoretical chemists, who won the award in 1967.

See the Daily News (link: http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/something-like-a-phenomenon-paul-ayers-receives-national-research-grant/) for another story on Prof. Ayers and this latest accolade.