A paper based on work by graduate student (and first author) Amer Deirieh S.M. ’12 and former postdoctoral associate J. Alberto Ortega S.M. ’06, Ph.D. ’10, Professor Franz-Josef Ulm and Younane Abousleiman of the University of Oklahoma received the Best Paper Prize for 2012 from Acta Geotechnica. “Nanochemomechanical Assessment of Shale: a Coupled WDS-Indentation Analysis,” appeared in the Dec. 2012 issue of the journal. Deirieh is now a doctoral student working with senior lecturer and senior researcher John Germaine.