The award was presented by the South African Region of the International Society of Electrochemistry at the gala night of the 13th Topical Meeting of the ISE. Prof Ignacy Cukrowski received this award in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the advancement of Environmental Electrochemistry and Electro catalysis in South Africa.

Prof Cukrowski has twice been recognised as an Exceptional Academic Achiever by the University of Pretoria, the first being in 2008.

For his PhD (completed at the Marie Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland, and which led to numerous patents and publications) Prof Cukrowski designed, built, tested, and optimised a unique voltammetry system with a built-in self-controlling digital logic for ultra-trace analysis on eight channels (working stations) with specially designed electrode systems working in a parallel mode. In 2001 he attained the DSc (Habilitatzion) from the Nicholaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland, based on results from his work at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).

Prof Cukrowski is the founder and was for ten years, first president of the Electrochemical Society of South Africa and organised several national and international conferences. He is a member of the South African Chemical Institute. Prof Cukrowski established electrochemistry research laboratories at both Wits and UP. He has supervised about 30 MSc, PhD and Postdoctoral Fellows, published over 80 papers in, and refereed for, 12 international journals. He has delivered over 20 invited plenary and keynote lectures, presented more than 30 seminars and given at least 110 conference presentations across the globe.

He was the project leader of numerous research projects organised by amongst others, the NRF, the Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (THRIP), the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project, Sasol, Anglo-American and Chrome International. He is an NRF C-rated scientist.