Condensed Matter was pleased to support the Distinguished Scientific ACSIN 2016 Awards for early career achievements. This was awarded to Dr. Alessandro Ricci at the recent ACSIN conference in Rome. Condensed Matter contributed 200 CHF (Swiss Francs) to the prize. Congratulations!

Dr. Ricci is a scientist at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) where he investigates spatial inhomogeneity and dynamics, of spins, charges and defects orders, in strongly correlated systems. During his PhD in Material Science at Sapienza University of Rome he worked on iron-based superconductors and cuprates. He is a pioneer of the scanning nano X-ray diffraction technique applied to visualize the nanoscale phase separation and control the structural and magnetic inhomogeneity in High-Temperature superconductors. He is author of more than 60 original papers published on peer-reviewed journals including Nature, PNAS and Physical Review, collecting about 1500 citations with a h-index 20. He has presented 18 invited talks and 10 seminars, and has received 8 national and international awards. In 2013 he received the Italian habilitation as Associate professor in Condensed Matter Physics.

The 13th International Conference on Atomically Controlled Surfaces, Interfaces and Nanostructures (ACSIN) was held in Rome between 9 and 15 October 2016. It was co-chaired by the Editor-in-Chief of Condensed Matter, Prof. Antonio Bianconi (RICMASS, Rome, Italy) and Patrick Soukiassian (Université de Paris-Sud, France) and featured around 150 participants.