Matthew Grayson Receives Humboldt Alumni Award from German Foundation

Matthew Grayson, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the McCormick School of Engineering, has been awarded the Humboldt Alumni Award 2012 for Innovative Networking Initiatives by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

This award, which is funded by the German government, is given annually to three Humboldt alumni around the world to contribute to sustainable academic research and cultural relations between Germany and the United States and to strengthen the regional alumni network of German and U.S. researchers.  

Previous Humboldt Foundation award recipients are eligible for the alumni award. Grayson previously won a research award from the foundation and from 2001 to 2003 performed post-doctoral work at the Technical Universitaet Muenchen in Munich.

Grayson's alumni award proposal, entitled the "Electronic Materials Gateway Network," will establish an international exchange network of research experts between the United States and Germany in the field of electronic materials. 

This network will allow weeklong visits of eight guest research professors between the United States and Germany over three years, and will give three exceptional bachelor’s or master’s students the chance to conduct two months of thesis research abroad in a lab of one of the network partners.  

In addition to Northwestern University, U.S. institutional partners in Grayson's network include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, the University of Wisconsin, Northern Illinois University, and Washington University in St. Louis. German partners include the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the RWTH Universitaet Aachen.  

Grayson will receive the award in Berlin on June 20.