Matthew Lloyd, a senior materials engineering student from Templeton, was awarded the Best Poster award at the recent international Materials Research Society Spring Conference.

Lloyd was one of 40 undergraduate students from around the world who was awarded a grant to carry out a research project and present the results at the conference. Each student selected their own project. The title of Lloyd's work was "Improved Efficiency Polymer/Oxide Hetero-Junction Solar Cells."

He competed against students from such institutions as the Colorado School of Mines, Cornell University, UC San Diego, Case Western Reserve University and Technische Universitat Munchen in Germany.

The conference, held in San Francisco, was attended by approximately 2500 engineers and scientists from the United States and abroad.

Professor David Braun of the Electrical Engineering Department was Lloyd's advisor.

"I'd like to emphasize Matt's impressive initiative in conceiving his idea, writing an original proposal, carrying out the experiments and preparing the final poster. He did this with only minimal assistance from the faculty members who advised him.