Awards and Honors

College of Chemistry awards and honors featured in the news.

Clayton Radke recipient of IOR Pioneer award

November 26, 2019
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Ellen Pawlikowski

Clayton Radke, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is the recipient of a 2020 IOR Pioneer award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) for his important scientific research into surface interfaces. Professor Radke will be presented with the award during the SPEIOR conference in April, 2020. Radke's research focuses on combining principles of surface and colloid science towards engineering technologies where phase boundaries dictate system behavior.

Professor David Schaffer elected to AAAS

November 26, 2019
Robert Saunders | UC Berkeley

David Schaffer

Professor David Schaffer joins four other Berkeley faculty members who have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon the society’s members by their peers. Schaffer has been elected “for pioneering contributions to biomolecular engineering, with particular attention to directed evolution to create viruses for the efficient, targeted and safe delivery of gene medicines.”

Alexis Bell elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences

November 20, 2019
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Alexis Bell

The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce that Alexis Bell, The Dow Professor of Sustainable Chemistry, has been made a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The Membership of RAS is formed of its Members (Academicians), the Corresponding Members, and Foreign Members. All categories of membership are elected by the General Assembly of the RAS out of the candidates elected at the General Meetings of the Departments held prior to the General Assembly of RAS, which convenes every three years. All Academy members are elected for life.

Meet our faculty: A conversation with 2019 D.I.C. Wang Award Winner Douglas S. Clark

November 19, 2019
By Hailey Murphy | AIChE ChEnected

Douglas Clark

Douglas S. Clark was presented the 2019 D.I.C. Wang Award for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering at the Annual Meeting in Orlando on November 11, 2019, where he delivered his award lecture titled “From Artificial Cofactors to Synthetic Arrays: Teaching Old Enzymes New Tricks.”

Diamond Jubilee celebration at IIT Kanpur honors Nitash Balsara

November 4, 2019
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Nitash Balsara

The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), one of the first Indian Institutes of Technology and a globally acclaimed Institute of national importance, has just completed celebrating its diamond jubilee. As part of the celebrations, alumni from the College, including Professor Nitash Balsara were honored for their academic excellence, professional excellence and entrepreneurship.

Alumni Klaas Bergmann and Lisa Onishi awarded industry prizes

November 4, 2019
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Alumni in the news

Professor Emeritus Klaas Bergmann has been awarded the 2020 Davisson-Germer Prize in Atomic or Surface Physics by APS Physics “for the invention of Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) that became universally used for coherent transfer in quantum systems with unprecedented efficiency and robustness."

Dr. Lisa Onishi, Chemical Engineer, Researcher and Senior Process Engineer at Intel, has been recognized with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award for her "dedication, achievements, and leadership as a professional engineer".

Kwabena Bediako among recipients of Air Force award granted to 40 scientists and engineers through young investigator research program

October 16, 2019
Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Kwabena Bediako

ARLINGTON,VIRGINIA – The Air Force Office of Scientific Research — the basic research component of the Air Force Research Laboratory — today announced it will award approximately $17.8 million in grants to 40 scientists and engineers from 30 research institutions and businesses who submitted winning research proposals through the Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program (YIP).

Distinguished European Academy elects new faculty member Polly Arnold

September 24, 2019
Berkeley Lab Press Release

Polly Arnold

Prominent heavy-element chemist Polly Arnold has been elected a member of Academia Europaea. Her research focuses on advancing our understanding of the bonding and reactivity of heavy elements, the elements of the f-block of the periodic table. Arnold was recently appointed Chemical Sciences Division Director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Concurrent with her role at Berkeley Lab, she will also join the Chemistry Department faculty at UC Berkeley in January 2020.

Paul Alivisatos announced as 2019 Welch Award in Chemistry recipient

September 13, 2019
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

Paul Alivisatos and Charles Leiber

The Welch Foundation, one of the nation’s largest sources of private funding for basic chemical research, has announced that Drs. Armand Paul Alivisatos and Charles M. Lieber are the 2019 recipients of the prestigious Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry. Highly-respected and influential leaders in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology, Drs. Alivisatos and Lieber are being recognized for their important research contributions which have had a significant, positive impact on humankind.

CBE faculty announced as Bakar Fellows

September 6, 2019
UC Berkeley, College of Chemistry Press Release

carbon nanotube

Two faculty scientists in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) at UC Berkeley including Professor Roya Maboudian and Assistant Professor Markita Landry, have been named to the 2019-20 cohort of Bakar Fellows, an honor that gives the named fellows the money and time to translate their laboratory breakthroughs into technologies ready for the marketplace. The Bakar Fellows Program was launched at UC Berkeley in 2012 and fosters faculty entrepreneurship in fields including engineering, computer science, the biological and physical sciences and architecture.