The American Physical Society (APS) has awarded the 2011 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials to Arthur P. Ramirez, dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. The APS presents the McGroddy Prize each year to recognize outstanding achievement in the science and application of new materials.
In making the award, the selection committee cited Ramirez "for intellectual leadership leading to the identification of geometrically frustrated magnets as an important class of materials." The $10,000 prize is funded by an endowment from IBM and was established in 1997.
Ramirez joined UC Santa Cruz as dean of the Baskin School of Engineering in May 2009 from LGS, a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent. He spent much of his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he served as the director of the device physics research department before becoming leader of composite materials and device development for LGS.
A fellow of the APS, Ramirez has served on the APS Council and the executive committee of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics. He has also served on the Solid State Sciences Committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He earned his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics at Yale University.
