For pioneering research in disturbance and landscape ecology and in modeling of land-use change with its implications for global changes, which have influenced environmental decision making on a worldwide scale.
For internationally recognized contributions in distributed and cluster computing, including the development of the Parallel Virtual Machine and the Message Passing Interface standard now widely used in science to solve computational problems in biology, physics, chemistry, and materials science.
For theoretical research on the electronic and vibronic structures and optical properties of defects in ionic crystals, and for work at the forefront of the rapidly developing field of laser annealing of semiconductors, leading to advances in the photovoltaic conversion of solar energy.