Awards and Honors

College of Chemistry awards and honors featured in the news.

Naomi Ginsberg receives ACS early-career award in experimental physical chemistry

February 26, 2020

Naomi Ginsberg

The American Society of Chemistry (ACS) has announced Naomi S. Ginsberg is a recipient of the 2020 early-career award in experimental physical chemistry. She is being recognized "For the development of new time- and space-resolved imaging and spectroscopy methods to study dynamical phenomena in heterogeneous materials". The Physical Chemistry Division of ACS annually sponsors senior and early-career awards in theoretical and experimental physical chemistry that are intended to recognize the most outstanding scientific achievements of members of the Division. The recipients will be honored at the the Fall ACS National Meeting in San Francisco.

Jean Fréchet awarded Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering

January 7, 2020

Jean Fréchet and C. Grant Willson

The National Academy of Engineering has announced today that the 2020 Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering will be awarded to Jean Fréchet, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and C. Grant Willson, Professor Emeritus at UT Austin “for the invention, development, and commercialization of chemically amplified materials for micro- and nanofabrication, enabling the extreme miniaturization of microelectronic devices.”

William Lester: Lifetime achievement award

February 5, 2020

William Lester

Dr. William Alexander Lester, Jr, is a Chemist & Educator for the University of California, Berkeley. He was just recently selected for the Lifetime Achievement Award for 2019 and as Top Chemist Educator of the Year for 2018 by the International Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP) for his outstanding leadership and commitment to the field. With close to 6 decades of professional experience as a seasoned and trusted Chemist and Educator, Dr. Lester has certainly proven himself as an accomplished professional and expert in the field.

Sixth Nano Research Award presented to Xinhe Bao and Omar M. Yaghi

June 27, 2019

Omar Yaghi

This year’s Nano Research Award, which is sponsored by Tsinghua University Press (TUP) and Springer Nature, was presented to two celebrated researchers in Changsha, China on June 23rd. Omar M. Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley received the award for pioneering a new field of research known as reticular chemistry. This chemistry has led to the discovery of several new classes of extended structures called metal-organic frameworks, covalent organic frameworks, zeolitic imidazolate frameworks, and molecular weaving.

Clayton Radke recipient of IOR Pioneer award

November 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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".