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Award plaque being presented to a man with short white hair and eyeglasses flanked by two other men, all wearing suits and ties

Ahmad Safari, a distinguished professor in the School of Engineering Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is the recipient of the coveted 2023 IEEE UFFC-S Technical Achievement Award.

“I am pleased and proud to have the Society’s highest Technical Achievement Award,” says Safari, who joined the School of Engineering faculty in 1986. “I believe the award is a result of the high quality of the research activities in my group in the MSE department and at Rutgers Engineering. I’m also grateful for the productivity of my research group over the past few decades, and for the strong support of my family.”

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society (UFFC-S) award recognizes Safari’s “outstanding four decades of contributions to the fields of piezoelectric composites, ferroelectric ceramics, and thin films as a scientist, innovator, educator, communicator, and leader.”

MSE department chair and distinguished professor Lisa Klein notes, “Ahmad Safari is a leader in ultrasonic materials, contributing to breakthroughs in the use of ultrasonics in medical imaging. Many of his PhD students work for the companies designing advanced diagnostic equipment.”

Safari, whose additional research interests include the structure-property relationships in ferroelectric, dielectric, and piezoelectric materials – whether thin films, bulk ceramics, or ceramic-polymer composites – for various applications.

Currently, in a research project supported by the Glenn Howatt Foundation, Safari reports that his research group is “studying the development of antiferroelectric silver niobate doped with tantalum and manganese in the form of bulk ceramic and thin films for energy storage applications.”

In September, he will travel to Montreal, Canada for the 2023 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, where he will be presented with his award.