The prestigious William Maxwell Steen Award has been awarded to our group by Laser Institute of America in recognition to significant developments in laser material processing. The award was presented online during the 2020 edition of the International Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (ICALEO). The LaserON research group from the University of Vigo won first place in this prestigious international award ahead of the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) (USA) and the laser technology company PRECITEC (Germany), who came in second and third respectively. The innovation that is the object of the award is a process invented and patented by the researchers of the LaserON group that allows, for the first time, to obtain glass nanofibers without limitation of length. The process has been called Cofiblas (Continuous fiberizing by laser melting).