President Barack Obama met with NYU Chemist Nadrian Seeman and other winners of the 2010 Kavli Prize, which is given every two years for outstanding research and seminal advances in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, on June 6 in the Oval Office.

Seeman (in striped shirt, sixth from the right) received the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for his creation of robotic devices that have the potential to create new materials a billionth of a meter in size. Seeman shared the prize with Donald Eigler of IBM’s Almaden Research Center.

Seeman, the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor of Chemistry at NYU, founded and developed the field of DNA nanotechnology—which is now pursued by laboratories across the globe—more than a quarter century ago. His creations allow him to arrange pieces and form specific molecules with some precision – similar to the way a robotic automobile factory can be told what kind of car to make. Seeman’s work led the Christian Science Monitor to conclude that “nanotechnology may have found its Henry Ford.”

The Kavli Prize is a partnership of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Kavli Foundation, and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. The laureates received a scroll, a gold medal, and share of the $1,000,000 prize for each of the three fields. They were honored at the Kavli Prize Award Ceremony last fall at Oslo Concert Hall.