The annual Sômiya Award is named in honor of Dr. Shigeyuki Sômiya, Emeritus Professor of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and later Dean at Teikyo University of Science and Engineering. Dr. Sômiya is a winner of the MRS Medal and the Japanese Scientific Academic Award.

Professor Sômiya spent his post-graduate years in the U.S. and embarked on a series of collaborative research and exchange visits in many countries, starting in 1969 with the U.S.-Japan Workshop in Ceramics -- the very first in materials science. He also actively pursued joint work with colleagues in Europe, and brought many international materials gatherings to Japan.

The IUMRS confers the Sômiya Award to intercontinental teams of materials researchers and is seeking nominations for the annual Sômiya Award, which recognizes research on real materials conducted by a research team whose members are drawn from at least two continents.

The Sômiya Award recipients are selected by the IUMRS Commission on Awards. The winner(s) receive an award commemorating the occasion and free registration to the annual IUMRS International Conference where they present their work.

The following criteria are used by the IUMRS Commission on Awards for selection:

• The team to be honored must have collaborated across at least two continents (e.g. N. America, Europe, Asia, Australia, etc.) some time during the last decade.
• The collaborative work must be of the highest quality and well recognized by the international materials community.
• The impact on technology or society is also a major factor.

Any member of an adhering MRS Society is invited to nominate the achievements of any such team, for the Award. Nominators should note that the importance of the cooperative element is a major aspect of the choice of the winners in addition, of course, to the novelty and importance of the research.

Nominations for the IUMRS Sômiya Award must be submitted electronically using the official nomination form.