Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been named recipient of the 2008 National Materials Advancement Award. The honor will be presented during a gala reception at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in December 2008.

The award is given by the Federation of Materials Societies, a consortium of technical and professional societies and associations whose constituencies include scientists, engineers and other professionals active in the areas of materials policy as well as R&D, processing, manufacturing, recovery, and resource availability.

Recipients of the award are "individuals who have demonstrated their outstanding capabilities in advancing the effective and economic use of materials and the multi-disciplinary field of materials science and engineering generally, and who contribute to the application of the materials profession to national problems and policy."

Previous recipients of the National Materials Advancement Award include Paul C. Maxwell, science consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science (1985); Mildred Dresselhaus, director, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy (2000); John Hopps, under secretary of defense (2003); and Dr. Alton D. Romig, Jr., vice president, Sandia National Laboratories (2005).