It is our pleasure to announce that in 2022, the Award was presented to Professor Emerita Renée Heilbronner (University of Basel, Switzerland).

In her long career spanning more than four decades, Professor Renée Heilbronner has made path breaking contributions in Structural Geology, particularly in the field of rock deformation textures and microstructures. She developed the Computer Integrated Polarization (CIP) microscopy technique, which is used extensively by several researchers across the world for textural analysis of rocks and fabric quantification. This also formed the foundation of the textbook she wrote in 2014 viz. “Image Analysis in Earth Sciences: Microstructure and Texture Analysis of Earth Materials”. Her research contributions have been key to quantifying strain, as well as in enhancing our understanding of rock microstructure evolution, and its relation to rock rheology. Professor Heilbronner has had tremendous influence on the Structural Geology community, not only through her publications, but also through her teaching and workshop activities. She has mentored several geoscientists in her long academic career, who in turn have gone on to leave their own independent mark in Structural Geology.

The fourth Henk Zwart Award was presented to Professor Emerita Renée Heilbronner at DRT meeting in Catania, July 2022, by Dr Taija Torvela (vice-chair of TecTask).