Indian-American researcher Amit Goyal has been named the ‘2010 Innovator of the Year’ by leading technology publication R&D Magazine, whose awards are touted as the ‘Oscars of Innovation.’

An IIT Kharagpur alumnus, Goyal is a researcher at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee.

Widely regarded as an international leader in the field of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) materials, Goyal is known for his contributions to the practical use of HTS and development and fabrication of wires that allow these superconductors to be adopted in the marketplace.

Terming the award as a “tremendous honour,” Goyal said the recognition “represents an implicit responsibility of continuing to strive towards full commercialisation of the innovations I have been involved with.”

Goyal will receive his award at the 48th Annual R&D 100 Awards on 11th November in Florida.

Goyal has also developed flexible, single-crystal-like, semiconductor substrates for electronic device applications such as solar cells, which have led to the formation of the startup TexMat.

His technical contributions have been in the field of large-area, low-cost, high performance flexible electronic devices, including superconductor-based and semiconductor-based devices.

In the last three years, he has received three R&D 100 Awards related to fabrication of HTS wires.

He has published more than 300 papers, has more than 5,000 citations and holds 54 patents.

A recent Thompson-Reuters’s Essential Science Indicators analysis of citations and papers published worldwide in the last decade in the field of high-temperature superconductivity ranks him as the most cited author worldwide.

Goyal joined ORNL as a postdoctoral fellow in 1991 after completing his doctorate at the University of Rochester.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and received executive business training from Purdue University and the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.