The EFCE Excellence award in Thermodynamics and Transport properties is awarded every second year to an excellent PhD thesis. In 2021, it was awarded to my former PhD student and present collaborator, Dr. Ailo Aasen. The judging committee of EFCE’s Thermodynamics and Transport Properties Working Party was highly complementary of the technical quality of Aasen’s work, which included his innovative approach to include quantum effects into classical Helmholtz energy equations of state and discussion of multicomponent nucleation phenomena. The Excellence Award was received virtually at the 31st European Symposium on Applied Thermodynamics (ESAT 2021), where a picture of Ailo Aasen in his presentation during the coference can be found below.