Awards
Frederic Joliot-Curie Medal - Awarded to Mark A. Prelas, Professor, Director of Research, Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute
Professor Mark A. Prelas, Director of Research, Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute at the University of Missouri-Columbia has been awarded the Frederic Joliot-Curie Medal for his pioneering work in nuclear energy conversion and nuclear batteries. The Frederic Joliot-Curie Medal is an award sponsored by the Government of Russia, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the International Center for Hydrogen Energy Technologies (UNIDO-ICHET), the International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE) and the International Scientific Journal of Alternative Energy and Ecology. Professor Prelas is the first recipient of the Frederic Joliot-Curie medal. He was selected by an international committee based on his scientific innovation, his numerous contributions to the advancement of nuclear energy conversion and nuclear batteries, and his leadership in the field. He is internationally known for his work on nuclear pumped lasers (he discovered an atomic carbon nuclear pumped laser which was among the first of such lasers that was reproduced by laboratories around the world), for his work on the nuclear light bulb (a means of generating hydrogen, electrical power and laser energy directly from nuclear reactions), and for his pioneering work on wide-band gap photovoltaic cells (wide band-gap photovoltaic cells are key components of present day nuclear batteries as well as the nuclear light bulb).
Missouri Outstanding Citizen of the Year Award
Dr. Mark Prelas of the Nuclear Science & Engineering Institute at Mizzou to receive the MO Outstanding Citizen of the Year Award, and the NSEI was also recognized for being the #1 Nuclear Engineering program in the United States for 2007. It was given to him on April 9, 2008 in the House of Representatives in Jefferson City by Bryan Pratt, Speaker Pro Tem. The President Of the University System, Gary Forsee, was there along with Ken Dean, Associate Provost. House of Representatives Dannie Moore, spoke from the floor commending Mark’s accomplishments: being on the cutting edge of nuclear research, the recipient of the first Madame Curie Award from Russia, & she also recognized the excellent students produced from the Nuclear Engineering Institute at Mizzou.