Professor Dawson’s award was announced at ISA’s General Assembly and is the second international award he has received in 2021. Earlier that year, he was named as the recipient of Optica’s (OSA) Nick Holonyak Jr Award.

He has won the ISA award jointly with Prof Hongxing Jiang of Texas Tech University. The award is presented to individuals or organisations “who stay at the forefront of solid -state lighting (SSL) development, whose outstanding contributions have changed our lives, and who lead the field with innovative applications impacting human society.”

Dawson said: “I am deeply honored and very grateful to receive this ISA award. ISA promotes the sustainable development and application of solid-state lighting worldwide and previous awardees include leading academics, organizations and businesses contributing to the research, development, roll out and exploitation of solid-state lighting. The award this year, under the category of Science and Technology, recognizes the importance of micro-LEDs, a new electronic visual display technology in which the University of Strathclyde has been a pioneer. I am particularly pleased that my co-honoree is Prof Hongxing Jiang, a close colleague for the past twenty years in the establishment and development of the micro-LED field.”

Professor Dawson’s career has focused on applied research in academia and industry in the UK and USA and he has been involved in the formation and technical development of a number of spinout businesses.  

His work involves semiconductor materials, microfabrication, optoelectronic device development and laser technology, with applications in optical wireless communications, displays, biomedical instrumentation and the heterogeneous integration of separately manufactured components into single devices.

Previous winners of the Global SSL Award of Outstanding Achievement include Prof Harald Haas, now of Strathclyde’s department of electronic and electrical engineering, and Nobel laureate Prof Shuji Nakamura.