Photo: Professor Dean Toste presents at the 21st International Conference of Organic Chemistry in 2016.
Dean Toste, Professor of Chemistry and a Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, has been awarded the Humboldt Research Award. Professor Toste was nominated for this award by Prof. Dr. Dirk Trauner of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.
This award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. In addition, the award winner is invited to carry out research projects with specialist colleagues in Germany. The organization's hope is that in this way cooperation of the international scientific community will be advanced.
Professor Toste's current research is primarily aimed toward the development and study of catalysts, catalytic reactions and methods to address challenges in chemical synthesis and energy. Prof. Toste and his coworkers were instrumental in the past decades advancement of the field of homogeneous catalysis with gold and introduction of chiral counterions as a paradigm for asymmetric catalysis. In addition, Prof. Toste and his collaborators have explored supramolecular catalysts for organic reaction, developed novel methods for merging homogeneous/heterogeneous catalysis and tools for their in situ study, described processes for the conversion of biomass to fuels and chemicals, reported on the application of multivariate analysis for mechanistic studies and, most recently, described a method for selective functionalization of biomolecules
Professor Toste received his PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University and completed his postdoctoral studies at Caltech. He joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 2002. Among his many accolades, he has received the German Chemical Society Horst-Parcejus Preis, American Chemical Society Creativity in Synthetic Organic Chemistry Award, Mitsui Catalysis Award, Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry Japan Mukaiyama Award, Royal Society of Chemistry Merck Award, and was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada – Academy of Science.