The Cryogenic Society of America’s Roger W. Boom Award was presented to Dr. Danko van der Laan, president, Advanced Conductor Technologies, during the August 11 awards ceremony at the Applied Superconductivity Conference in Charlotte NC. It was presented by Dr. Terry Grimm, Niowave, Inc., himself a former Boom awardee and now chair of the CSA Boom Award committee.
The award honored van der Laan’s mix of strengths that are expected to make him one of the key leaders of Applied Superconductivity of his generation. An independent thinker, he is fully prepared to consider the very practical and the very fundamental aspects of superconducting devices. His work was technologically impactful while scientifically driven.
His fundamental work resulted in a highly practical outcome in the Conductor-on-Round-Core (CORC) cable implantation of a coated conductor, which technology he then moved to an industrial scale at his own company, Advanced Conductor Technologies, developing cables for high-field magnets and high-density power transmission. These CORC conductors are expected to be of major importance for future large scale superconducting magnet systems. He’s also leading a team at the University of Colorado/NIST to develop the measurement infrastructure and perform the research on YBCO coated conductors and CORC cables needed for high-energy physics magnet applications.
The Boom Award is named for the emeritus professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose career spanned more than 30 years, during which he motivated a large number of young scientists and engineers to pursue careers in cryogenic engineering and applied superconductivity. It is given bi-annually to a young professional under 40 years of age who shows promise for making significant contributions to the fields of cryogenic engineering and applied superconductivity.
Previous Roger W. Boom Awardees:
- Dr. Christopher M. Rey, Energy to Power Solutions, 1996
- Prof. Justin Schwartz, North Carolina State University, 1998
- Dr. Chao Wang, Cryomech, Inc., 2000
- Dr. Franz J. Baudenbacher, Vanderbilt University, 2002
- Dr. Terry L. Grimm, Niowave, Inc., 2004
- Dr. Jeffrey Parrell, Oxford Instruments Superconductivity, 2006
- Prof. Gregory Nellis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008
- Prof. Philippe J. Masson, University of Houston, Texas Center for Superconductivity, 2010
- Dr. Joel Ullom, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, 2012
