Tony Mikos of Rice University and Johnna Temenoff of Georgia Tech are the recipients of the 2010 ASEE Meriam/Wiley Distinguished Author Award. This is a most prestigious award and recognizes an outstanding author or group of authors of a basic undergraduate textbook in engineering. With more than 70 nominated books, the selection is extremely difficult. What is even more noteworthy is that it is the first time in the history of this award that a materials science text has been selected!

The book recognized is of course Johnna's and Tony's textbook, "Biomaterials: The Intersection of Biology and Materials Science" (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008). This textbook has been adopted for use by more than 40 US Universities already. The nomination indicates that : The two authors take a fresh approach to the problem. They concentrate on materials and focus on a thorough materials analysis that does not take shortcomings on mechanical properties, structure or molecular analysis. But at the same time they offer a thorough presentation of biological considerations in a succinct way.

The award consists of a $2,000 honorarium, framed certificates and reimbursement of transportation costs to the ASEE Annual Conference. The presentation of this year's ASEE national awards will occur at the Annual Awards Banquet on Wednesday evening, June 23rd in Louisville, Kentucky. The banquet is the culmination of the Society's Annual Conference and Exposition, which will be held June 20-23, 2010 at the Kentucky International Convention Center.