The 8th Liquid Matter Conference is pleased to host the second edition of the EPJE - Pierre Gilles De Gennes Lecture Prize. This initiative of the European Physical Journal E  - Soft Matter and Biological Physics takes the name from the illustrious Nobel laureate who founded the journal.

The Editors in Chief of EPJE elected Prof. Michael E. Cates of the University  of Edinburgh, UK, as the prize recipient for 2011 in recognition of his  outstanding and deeply influential contribution in soft matter science. The  award includes a Eur 1000 prize and it will be presented to Prof. Michael E. Cates by Prof. Daan Frenkel (Editor in Chief of EPJE) at the beginning of his Plenary Talk at the 8th Liquid Matter Conference.

The prize is sponsored by the publishers of EPJ, namely EPD Science, SIF and Springer.

Biographical sketch of Prof . Michael E. Cates:

Mike Cates completed his PhD in 1985 at Cambridge under the supervision of Sir Sam Edwards. After postdocs in the USA he returned to Cambridge as a Research Fellow and then Lecturer. In 1995 he was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh ('Natural Philosophy' being an archaic term for 'Physics'). In 2004 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2007 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (of London) and was appointed to a Royal Society Research Professorship in the same year. In 2009 he received the Gold Medal of the British Society of Rheology and also the Dirac Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics.