Awards and Honors

College of Chemistry awards and honors featured in the news.

Alumna Frances Arnold is only the third Millennium Tech Prize winner to receive the Nobel Prize

October 26, 2018
by Technology Academy Finland

Frances Arnold receiving the Millennium Tech Prize

The 2016 Millennium Technology Prize winner Frances Arnold won the 2018 Nobel prize in chemistry and is now the third person to have won these two prestigious prizes. Professor Arnold, who is on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, won the Nobel prize for her career-long work in directed evolution."

How is directed evolution changing the world?

October 30, 2018
Bethany Halford | C&E News | photo: Lance Hayashida/Caltech

How Frances Arnold changed the world

Life is a tornado, and I am a leaf,” Frances Arnold says. As the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering & Biochemistry at California Institute of Technology, Arnold’s schedule was already packed. Now she’s trying to figure out how to juggle her teaching responsibilities and the lectures she promised to give with writing her Nobel address, preparing for the trip to Stockholm, and tending to the massive influx of press interviews, invitations, congratulatory emails, and Twitter shout-outs that have come with winning the Nobel Prize.

Alumna Lucy Ziurys wins the 2019 Laboratory Astrophysics Prize

October 26, 2018
American Astronomical Society

Alumna Lucy Ziurys receives the 2019 Laboratory Astrophysics Prize

The Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is awarding its 2019 Laboratory Astrophysics Prize to Professor Lucy Ziurys (Ph.D. Chem, '84) of the University of Arizona for her outstanding contributions to rotational spectroscopy of transient molecules and radio astronomy.

Omar Yaghi wins BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences

January 23, 2018
BBVA Foundation

Omar YaghiThe BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category goes, in this tenth edition, to Jordanian-American chemist Omar Yaghi, “for his pioneering work in the conception and synthesis of new...

Five distinguished individuals to be honored with highest American Cancer Society Award

October 17, 2018
PR Newswire

American Cancer Society LogoThe American Cancer Society will bestow its highest honor – the Medal of Honor – to five individuals on Oct. 18 in Washington DC. The Medal of Honor is awarded to distinguished individuals who have made valuable contributions in the fight against cancer. The 2018 recipients include the Honorable Joseph R. Biden Jr., for Cancer Control; Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, for Basic Research; Jennifer Doudna, PhD, for Basic Research; Charis Eng, MD, PhD, for Clinical Research; and Michael J. Thun MD, MS, for Cancer Control Science.

CBE Professor Nitash Balsara is recognized for his research by the Secretary of Energy

October 11, 2018
by Marge d'Wylde | College of Chemistry

Professor Nitash Balsara receives award Nitash Balsara is one of a group of scientists who have received a U.S. Secretary of Energy Achievement Award in Scientific and Operational Leadership for his research work with the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research Strategic and Operations (JCESR). JCESR is a DOE project working on advancements in battery technology.

Chemistry Ph.D. Candidate Wojciech Osowiecki named 2019 Siebel Scholar

October 1, 2018
College of Chemistry

Wojciech OsowieckiDoctoral candidate Osowiecki is among 8 UC Berkeley graduate students named 2019 Siebel Scholars.

College of Chemistry faculty and alums among ACS 2019 National Award winners

October 1, 2018
College of Chemistry

ACS logo

UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry was well represented among the winners of this year's ACS National Awards.

Professors Omar Yaghi and Michael O’Keeffe receive award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

September 19, 2018
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Array of Lithium Ion batteries stacked side by side.The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2019 Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography to Michael O’Keeffe, Arizona State University, and Omar M. Yaghi, University of California, “for their fundamental contributions to the development of reticular chemistry”.

Jennifer Doudna to receive the 2018 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize

September 14, 2018
Katherine Fenz | The Rockefeller University

Jennifer DoudnaThe Rockefeller University has announced that Jennifer Doudna will receive this year's Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, a major international accolade honoring outstanding women scientists.