The Hilton Head Workshop and TRF are pleased to announce the Oliver Brand Scholarship Award. This award, given to a student or postdoctoral researcher, recognizes an outstanding paper submitted to and presented at the Hilton Head Workshop. The award is given in honor and memory of Professor Oliver Brand (1964-2023).

Oliver was a leader, educator, and friend to many in the MEMS and microsystems community. He earned his PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH-Zurich) and spent more than two decades as a member of the Georgia Tech (GT) faculty. In addition to his academic duties, he led GT's Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, and was Director not only of the Coordinating Office for the NSF-funded National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), but also Director of the Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor, one of the 16 NNCI sites.

Oliver's research area was in CMOS MEMS and resonant MEMS sensors. He co-authored more than 120 publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings, including contributions to all of our major conferences: Hilton Head, Transducers, IEEE Sensors, and IEEE MEMS (of which he was General Co-Chair in 2008). He received many awards, including the 2005 IEEE Fink Prize, the 2011 GT Distinguished Mentor Award, the 2012 GT Outstanding Teaching Award, and the 2022 GT Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development Award for his work with the NIH in determining the efficacy of Covid-19 tests. In 2022, Bruce Tromberg, then director of the NIH's National Institute of Biomedical Engineering, called Brand and the rest of the team working on this project "absolutely heroic" for their contributions to fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

Selection Process
Nominations for the Scholarship Award are made by the Hilton Head Technical Program Committee based on submitted abstracts, and the final determination is confirmed by the TRF Awards Committee. To be eligible, the awardee must be a student or a postdoctoral associate and must attend the Hilton Head Workshop and present their work. In the case of multiple eligible authors of a selected work, the first author of the nominated paper (if a student or postdoc) will be given preference. The awardee will be notified soon after paper acceptance..

Award

• Formal recognition during the Hilton Head Workshop
• A paid-up registration for the Hilton Head Workshop

This award is made possible by Oliver's devoted friends and colleagues.