Beckman Institute researcher Paul Braun has won the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation.

The Humboldt Foundation gives the Bessel Research Award to scientists and scholars who are internationally renowned in their field, completed their doctorates less than 18 years ago, and who in the future are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements which will have a seminal influence on their discipline beyond their immediate field of work.

Award winners are invited to spend a period of up to one year cooperating on a long-term research project with colleagues at a research institution in Germany. Braun will collaborate with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research at the University of Stuttgart.

Braun, leader of Beckman’s 3-D Micro- and Nanosystems group and Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Illinois, has a research focus on the formation and study of nano- and microstructures.