Manard chosen for Society of Applied Spectroscopy’s Lester W. Strock Award

Benjamin Manard, an analytical chemist in the Chemical Sciences Division of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will receive the 2024 Lester W. Strock Award from the Society of Applied Spectroscopy.

The prize is named for the late Lester W. Strock, a crystal chemist and pioneer in applied spectroscopy. The annual award recognizes researchers who produce outstanding publications in analytical atomic spectrochemistry.

“Manard’s publications over the last five years demonstrate a clear focus on the elemental and isotopic analysis of nuclear materials using a variety of different analytical techniques,” the committee wrote in a letter. It added that his “research details improvements in elemental and isotopic methodologies including innovative sample introduction as well as novel detection strategies.”

Manard is an expert in trace element and isotopic analysis who joined the ORNL staff in 2018. He works as a senior R&D staff scientist at ORNL’s state-of-the-art mass spectrometry facility, the Ultra-Trace Forensic Science Center, and leads the lab’s Chemical and Isotopic Mass Spectrometry group. 

The award ceremony will take place at the organization’s annual meeting in late October, in Raleigh, North Carolina. It will be held in conjunction with the SciX Meeting presented by the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies. 

Manard received a bachelor of science in chemistry from Georgia Southern University, then earned a doctorate in analytical chemistry from Clemson University. Subsequently, he was awarded a Glenn T. Seaborg postdoctoral research fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he later served as a staff scientist.

He is the author of more than 60 journal articles, 10 of which have been featured on the cover. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Applied Spectroscopy Practica. 

Manard’s honors include the DOE’s Secretary of Energy Achievement Award in 2021.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.