The MAS Presidential Science Award honors a senior scientist for outstanding technical contributions to the field of microanalysis over a sustained period of time.
Dr. Kotula has a long career pioneering novel microanalytical techniques and data analysis methods. After being introduced to the wonders of materials science and microanalysis by Dr. C. Barry Carter as an undergraduate at Cornell University, he followed Dr. Carter to the University of Minnesota, obtaining a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1995. Subsequently, Dr. Kotula began a postdoctoral fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory with Dr. Terry Mitchell. In 1998, he became a technical staff member at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. At Sandia, Dr. Kotula gained experience characterizing all sorts of materials, primarily using TEM/STEM imaging and microanalysis. He helped to build a robust research program centered on spectral imaging and data analytics, in which he played a crucial role in the FBI’s investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks in Washington, DC. X-ray analysis software developed as a part of this effort was later licensed to Thermo Fisher Scientific and is used in over 700 laboratories worldwide. He was first to develop 3D spectral imaging in the FIB-SEM along with data analysis of the resulting spectral image series. He is also involved with development of large solid-angle, quasi-annular X-ray detectors for ion- and electron-beam systems. Dr. Kotula was an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University from 2001 to 2010.
Dr. Kotula has received an R&D 100 Award, three patents, and the KFJ Heinrich Award from the MAS. He was President of the MAS in 2007, President of MSA in 2019, and is currently the President of the Committee for Inter-American Societies for Electron Microscopy (CIASEM). He is a Fellow of both the MAS and MSA.