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Martin van Hecke elected APS fellow

Metamaterials researcher Martin van Hecke has been elected American Physical Society (APS) fellow, an honour exclusive to only half a percent of the society's members.

The Soft Matter Division of the American Physical Society elected Van Hecke 'For leading work in the field of jammed and disordered systems, and for pioneering the field of programmable mechanical metamaterials.'

Jammed and disordered systems are, for example, materials such as sand, which can flow like water, but which can also jam like cars in a traffic jam.

This way, Van Heckes colleagues honor his full research career, because this concerns research in the past of his research group. Now, his group Mechanical Metamaterials investigates foldable materials that can be given interesting properties by design. There are metamaterials which can count, calculate and even be programmed. Van Hecke is also connected to the Amsterdam based research institurte AMOLF.

'I'm very pleased with the APS fellowship', Van Hecke states by mail, 'I consider appreciation for the content of my work by international colleagues very important, contrary to what NWO seems to think.' Van Hecke refers to the new grant selection methods by the Dutch research funder NWO, which gives references and publications a less decisive role.

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