Awards and Honors

College of Chemistry awards and honors featured in the news.

Philomathia Prize advances novel work on the physics of bioelectricity

June 23, 2026
by Blake Edgar, UC Berkeley Inspire
Karthik Shekhar, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering (CBE) at UC Berkeley, the John F. Heil Jr. Professor, and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, has been selected as the fifth recipient of the Philomathia Prize.

Richmond Sarpong honoured with Royal Society of Chemistry Prize

June 17, 2026
Royal Society of Chemistry Press Release
The Pedler Prize is one of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Research & Innovation Prizes, given in celebration of exceptional people advancing the chemical sciences across industry and academia.

Raffy Xie honored with 2026 Departmental Citation in Data Science Undergraduate Studies

May 28, 2026
UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society
Chemistry major Yuzi (Raffy) Xie discovered data science, and with it, the possibility to connect chemical processes to systems-level patterns across entire regions.
https://cdss.berkeley.edu/dsus/news/raffy_xie_departmental_citation

Three UC Berkeley faculty members elected to UK's Royal Society

May 27, 2026
By Robert Sanders | Berkeley News
A geophysicist, a chemist and a computer vision expert will become fellows of the 365-year-old science academy.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/05/27/three-uc-berkeley-faculty-members-elected-t…

Naomi Ginsberg named to the 2026 class of Brown Investigators

May 20, 2026
Press Release
The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences at Caltech has announced professor of chemistry and physics Naomi Ginsberg as one of the eight distinguished recipients of the 2026 National Brown Investigator Award.

Two UC Berkeley scholars elected to the American Philosophical Society

May 19, 2026
By Robert Sanders | Berkeley News
Historian Carla Hesse and chemist Jeffrey Long were named to the oldest scholarly society in the nation.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/05/13/two-uc-berkeley-scholars-elected-to-the-ame…

Karthik Shekhar receives Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars award

May 4, 2026
By Veronica Bartell | College of Chemistry
Faculty who receive this award are within the first five years of their academic careers, have each created an outstanding independent body of scholarship, and are deeply committed to education.

The probability of greatness (and how to engineer it)

April 16, 2026
By Veronica Bartell | College of Chemistry
The CBE Department has an exceptionally high concentration of NAE members (42.9%), one of the highest densities for any single department in the world.

Markita Landry awarded Bakar Prize for nanotechnolgy innovations

February 23, 2023
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Markita Landry is one of four UC Berkeley faculty members to be awarded the 2023 Bakar Prize.

Enrique Iglesia is the recipient of the 2019 Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis

January 15, 2019
North American Catalyst Society Press Release
The award is presented jointly by the North American Catalysis Society (NACS) and the European Federation of Catalysis Societies (EFCATS).