Amit Goyal awarded prestigious University at Buffalo President’s Medal

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Amit Goyal, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor and founding director of UB’s RENEW Institute, received the University at Buffalo’s President’s Medal in recognition of extraordinary service to the university.

The medal, first presented in 1990, recognizes “outstanding scholarly or artistic achievements, humanitarian acts, contributions of time or treasure, exemplary leadership or any other major contribution to the development of the University at Buffalo and the quality of life in the UB community.”

An internationally recognized materials scientist and energy researcher, Goyal received honor at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ graduate commencement ceremony on May 17.

“Our university and our community have been greatly enriched by professor Goyal’s scholarship and service,” UB President Satish K. Tripathi said during the ceremony. “His leadership has placed UB at the forefront of efforts to reduce water and air pollution, and to find innovative, clean ways to produce, transmit and store energy.”

Goyal took the podium following Tripathi’s remarks.

“It is well recognized that transformative advancements in most areas of enquiry will occur at the interface of disciplines and will require a truly multidisciplinary team to tackle. Hence the need for convergent research. While many universities around the world recognize this fact, few have taken the bold step of actually creating truly multidisciplinary initiatives such as the RENEW Institute at UB, Goyal said.

“Because, they are indeed hard to establish; given the disciplinary silos, characteristic of most academic institutions. To do so, requires a university to have bold and visionary leadership; for which, I thank President Tripathi, Provost Zukoski, Dean Folks and the other deans of schools comprising the RENEW Institute for their exemplary leadership.

“I also want to thank faculty across the seven schools & colleges comprising RENEW for their collaboration in establishing the Institute.  On a personal note, I would like to thank all of my family; some of whom are here today; for without their support, encouragement and sacrifices over the years, it would not have been possible for me to accomplish what I have been able to do,” he said.

Goyal joined UB in 2015 to direct RENEW, an interdisciplinary institute that harnesses the expertise of more than 100 faculty in seven UB schools and colleges to explore solutions to globally pressing energy and environmental problems, as well as the social and economic issues with which they are connected.

Those schools and colleges include the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning, School of Law, School of Management, School of Public Health and Health Professions, and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Three years later, in 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his groundbreaking scientific advances and technological innovations that enabled the worldwide commercialization of high-temperature superconductors.

Prior to joining UB’s faculty, Goyal was a corporate fellow and distinguished scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

He has developed clean energy technologies for more than two decades and authored more than 350 technical publications. Thompson-Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators (ESI) and ScienceWatch.com, which track global trends and performance in research, ranked him as most-cited author worldwide in the field of high-temperature superconductivity from 1999-2009. A fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, he has 87 issued patents with more than 20 patents pending.

He has received numerous accolades, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) E.O. Lawrence Award in the inaugural category of Energy Science & Innovation, an award that the DOE secretary bestows on behalf of the president. Other key honors include 10 R&D 100 awards, which are widely regarded as the “Oscars for Innovation”; the 2010 R&D 100 Magazine’s Innovator of the Year Award; the Energy-100 Award for the finest 100 scientific accomplishments of the DOE since the department opened its doors in 1977; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technical Review TR100 Award.

He is an elected fellow of eight professional societies – the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Materials Research Society (MRS), the American Physical Society (APS), the World Innovation Foundation (WIF), the American Society of Metals (ASM), the Institute of Physics (IOP), the American Ceramic Society (ACERS) and the World Technology Network (WTN).

Goyal is founder and president of a private equity-funded solar photovoltaics company, and an intellectual property holding and consulting company.