MNA – A number of international scientific societies have presented prestigious awards to an Iranian scientist, Mohsen Esmaily, for cutting-edge research in the field of materials science.


Iranian scientist Mohsen Esmaily, in the Center of Energy and Materials at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg (Sweden), has received several respected awards and research funds for his great achievement in the field of Materials Science and Engineering during the last three years. Last year, for example, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Wallenberg Foundation presented their top Engineering prize to Dr. Esmaily for developing magnesium alloys as well as magnesium- and aluminum-based metal matrix composites (MMCs) with superior functional properties.

This year, Dr. Esmaily received a number of awards from several international scientific organization including the Electrochemical Society (Morris Cohen Award) and Acta Materialia Inc. in recognition of the groundbreaking research in the field of processing-microstructure-property relationships in light alloys and for innovative contributions to the development of ultra-light alloys with superior properties.

Dr. Mohsen Esmaily showed in his works reliable ways to create much more corrosion resistant light alloys than this far has been possible. This has opened up the field for new lightweight constructions, and thus may in the long run lead to a reduction of harmful emissions in various crucial sectors e.g., cars, trains and airplanes.

"To make the world a better place is my biggest goal, but along the way I need some support and appreciation so it was really rewarding for me to see that my work was appreciated by the community. I am thinking about all the days, nights, weekends, summers and holidays when I was in the office and in the lab instead of being with my family, with my son. I was happy when I got the awards because I knew that I have made a great contribution. I now feel even more motivated than before to do high quality research, but I also need to have more balance in my life", said Dr. Esmaily.

Recently, Mr. Esmaily, together with leading materials scientists from Spain, Germany, Australia, and USA, coauthored a 100-page comprehensive review (Fundamentals and Advances in Magnesium Alloy Corrosion) summarizing decades of Mg corrosion research as well as some new unpublished data. It was published August 2017 in the highly ranked journal Progress in Materials Science (5-year impact factor: 39.94) with reviewers comments such as “the best review I’ve ever seen in the field of corrosion”, “superior to the majority of previous Mg review articles”, and “a tremendous contribution to the field of Mg corrosion”. The paper is now listed as the second most downloaded review in the journal.

“I was managing the team and we had a (very) tight deadline. That was also a lot of hard work, but I would really suggest such work to other people at my level because at the end of this review I saw the bigger picture of our research, I found many interesting unknowns, and could select much better questions in the field of materials science to answer in the future. Also, I had the chance to interact with many prominent scientist”, said he.