Awards and Honors

College of Chemistry awards and honors featured in the news.

Omar Yaghi awarded the inaugural VinFuture Special Prize

January 24, 2022

Omar Yaghi at the VinFuture award ceremony - Vietnam

The first Special Prize, dedicated to “Innovators with Outstanding Achievements in Emerging Fields”, is awarded to Professor Omar Yaghi (USA) for his work on discovering metal-organic frameworks. — Photo courtsey VinFuture Prize

The first VinFuture Special Prize for Innovators with...

QB3 director David Schaffer elected to National Academy of Inventors

December 7, 2021

David Schaffer

David Schaffer, newly elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in his lab.

David Schaffer, a UC Berkeley chemical engineer who pioneered the use of engineered viruses to deliver gene therapies — nine of his therapies are currently in clinical trials — has been...

Peidong Yang elected Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

November 22, 2021

Peidong Yang

The College is pleased to announce that Peidong Yang, the S.K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, has been elected a Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Academy). The Academy also named...

Markita Landry awarded Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science

September 7, 2021

Markita Landry

Markita del Carpio Landry, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Berkeley has been announced as a 2022 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science recipient. The...

Postdoctoral researcher Lilia Xie awarded L'Oreal Fellowship

November 15, 2021

Lilia Xie, postdoc, Bediako Lab

The College is pleased to announce that postdoctoral researcher Lilia Xie (Bediako Lab) has been named a 2021 L’Oréal USA For Women...

Naomi Ginsberg elected a fellow of the American Physical Society

October 12, 2021

Naomi Ginsberg

The College of Chemistry is pleased to announce that the American Physical Society (APS) has elected Naomi Ginsberg, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics, as a Fellow for 2021. Prof. Ginsberg has been elected for the "innovative development of spatiotemporally resolved imaging...

Jay Keasling receives distinguished scientist fellow award

September 23, 2021

Jay Keasling

Jay Keasling, a senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), professor at UC Berkeley, and CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), has been named a Distinguished Scientist Fellow by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

He and the other...

Campus professor Richmond Sarpong receives 2021 Edward Leete Award

September 21, 2021

Richmond SarpongRichmond Sarpong from the College of Chemistry received the 2021 Edward Leete Award on Thursday for his research and teachings within the field of organic chemistry.

The Edward Leete Award acknowledges exceptional teaching and research contributions in the field of organic chemistry, according to the American Chemical Society, or ACS, website. The award is...

Kwabena Bediako named Moore Fellow

August 31, 2021

Kwabena Bediako
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has named Kwabena Bediako, The Cupola Era Professor in the College of Chemistry, a 2021 Fellow in Materials Synthesis.

Prof. Bediako will receive a grant for $1.2 million as...

Team wins competition to make space sugar in NASA competition

August 27, 2021

chemistry professor Peidong Yang, former postdoc Michael Ross, former graduate student Yifan Li and graduate student Stefano Cestellos-Blanco.

Team SSwEET was one of three finalists in NASA’s CO2 Conversion Challenge. The UC Berkeley team will receive...