2017 National Award Recipients

Marcy H. Towns, Purdue University

Award Citation: For research that has increased our understanding of undergraduate laboratory, physical chemistry, and group learning, which has positively impacted teaching and learning in chemistry.  

Peter J. Dunn, Pfizer (Retired)

Award Citation: For leading the Pfizer Green Chemistry Program and receiving significant external recognition, including for the greener total synthesis of sildenafil citrate.  

Yvonne C. Martin, Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie

Award Citation: For leading the field through creative additions, thoughtful application, and enthusiastic promotion of the tools of computer-aided drug design.

Douglas R. Worsnop, Aerodyne Research Inc. and University of Helsinki, Finland

Award Citation: For pioneering research on gas-aqueous atmospheric chemistry and the development of the aerosol mass spectrometer, which has revolutionized atmospheric aerosol measurements.

Richard B. Silverman, Northwestern University

Award Citation: For his fundamental enzyme inhibitor work resulting in his invention of pregabalin, which has become the blockbuster drug Lyrica^TM, marketed by Pfizer for fibromyalgia, neuropathic pain, spinal cord injury pain, and epilepsy.

Antonio Togni, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Award Citation: For research on electrophilic trifluoromethylation that combines rational experimental design, comprehensive analysis of mechanism, and detailed interpretation of structural influences on bonding and reactivity.

Matthew S. Sigman, University of Utah

Award Citation: For his creative, seminal work in synthetic organic chemistry, especially his innovative contributions to the Wacker oxidation and Heck reaction.

William B. Tolman, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Award Citation: For impactful contributions to our understanding of copper centers in biology and catalysis, and outstanding leadership in service to the inorganic chemistry and larger community.

Saundra Y. McGuire, Louisiana State University

Award Citation: For her distinguished service encouraging underrepresented students to reach their full potential by teaching them metacognitive learning strategies and mentoring them to success.

Judith M. Iriarte-Gross, Middle Tennessee State University

Award Citation: For her continued persistence and tireless efforts to level the playing field for women in chemistry and to inspire young women to major in chemistry.

Maria Hepel, State University of New York at Potsdam

Award Citation: For fostering and mentoring innovative undergraduate research in diverse fields of public concern related to human health, environmental monitoring and remediation, energy conversion, and nanotechnology.

Donald F. Hunt, University of Virginia

Award Citation: For pioneering efforts to develop mass spectrometry methods and instrumemtation that facilitated characterization of peptides and proteins and provided the foundation for the field of proteomics.

Zhenan Bao, Stanford University

Award Citation: For pioneering work on the design, processing, and applications of polymer electronic materials for flexible and stretchable electronics.

Robert T. Kennedy, University of Michigan

Award Citation: For the development of innovative techniques in miniaturization of chemical separations and microfluidics for highly sensitive analysis of biological compounds.

Nicholas A. Kotov, University of Michigan

Award Citation: For creative foundational studies of self-assembly phenomena of nanoparticles on surfaces and in dispersions.

Jane Frommer, IBM Research

Award Citation: For pioneering the use of STM/AFM in organic materials, for fundamental studies of the solution state of electronically conducting polymers, and for extensive community involvement.

Lawrence Que, Jr., University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Award Citation: For his many contributions to the field of inorganic chemistry that have profoundly impacted our understanding of the nature of high-valent iron centers in biology.

Marcetta Y. Darensbourg, Texas A&M University

Award Citation: For insight and application of the fundamental principles of organometallic chemistry to hydrogenase enzyme active sites and synthetic analogues as foundational bioorganometallic molecules.

Murugappan Muthukumar, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Award Citation: For incisive and ground-breaking analysis of fundamental problems across the full spectrum of polymer chemistry, especially with respect to charged polymers.

Neal K. Devaraj, University of California, San Diego

Award Citation: For his outstanding accomplishments in bioconjugation chemistry, which include the development of new reactions for cellular imaging and the assembly of artificial membranes.

Rakesh Agrawal, Purdue University

Award Citation: For novel and fundamental insights in the synthesis of energy efficient distillation and membranes based separation processes, and their application in numerous industrial plants.

Cynthia Friend, Harvard University

Award Citation: For her paradigmatic developments in the mechanistic understanding of oxygen-assisted catalytic cycles on gold surfaces and their implementation to nanoporous gold catalysts under realistic conditions.

Douglas A. Keszler, Oregon State University

Award Citation: For pioneering contributions to design and development of functional materials, including nonlinear optical crystals, transistor insulators and semiconductors, solar absorbers, and high-resolution inorganic patterning materials.

Peter Pulay, University of Arkansas

Award Citation: For the analytical gradient method, NMR parameter calculations, local correlation concept, and direct inversion in the iterative subspace technique.

D. Richard Cobb, Eastman Kodak Company (Retired)

Award Citation: For his exemplary service to the ACS as a leader at the local, regional, and national levels, which has had a wide-ranging impact on the Society.

Kim D. Janda, The Scripps Research Institute

Award Citation: For his ability to integrate the principles of chemistry, molecular biology, immunology, and neuropharmacology to create molecules engendered with both biological and chemical function.  

Laurie E. Locascio, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Award Citation: For outstanding leadership, vision, and creativity in promoting high-impact research and standards development to serve the chemical and chemical engineering communities.

Benjamin G. Davis, University of Oxford, England

Award Citation: For the development of selective and benign bond-forming strategies applied to biology, enabling functional mimicry of synthetic biomolecules, bioconjugates, cells, and viruses in vitro and in vivo.

Bruce H. Lipshutz, University of California, Santa Barbara

Award Citation: For more than 30 years of contributions of reagents and methodologies, many of which are commercially available and routinely used in synthetic organic chemistry.

Laura E. Slocum, Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, South Carolina

Award Citation: For inspiring students to learn the beauty of our molecular world and for contributions to chemistry education as a researcher, editor, and exemplary educator.

Carolyn Bertozzi, Stanford University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Award Citation: For pioneering the field of bioorthogonal chemistry, and for its innovative applications to the field of glycobiology

Neil K. Garg, University of California, Los Angeles

Award Citation: For breakthroughs in synthetic methodology and exceptional achievements in natural product synthesis.

Pingyun Feng, University of California, Riverside

Award Citation: For her advances in the synthesis of metal chalcogenide clusters and her crystal engineering of porous semiconductors, coordination polymers, and photocatalysts.

Bruce J. Berne, Columbia University

Award Citation: For pioneering theoretical and computer simulation studies of liquid state and biomolecular systems, and for dramatically increasing the impact of these methods in physical chemistry.

Vicki H. Wysocki, The Ohio State University

Award Citation: For her outstanding accomplishments in the development of surface-induced dissociation for native mass spectrometry structural characterization of non-covalent complexes.

Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts, University of California, Irvine

Award Citation: For her dedication to serving the chemical research community and for her inspirational work on interpreting science for the general public.  

Thomas Hager, University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication

Award Citation: For displaying a magnificent range of scientific mastery that, time and again, has enabled him to demystify chemistry and other sciences for the public.

Nilay Hazari, Yale University

Award Citation: For creative contributions to the elucidation of inorganic and organometallic reaction mechanisms.  

Stephen F. Martin, The University of Texas at Austin

Award Citation: For creative invention and development of new methods and strategies and their application to concise syntheses of a remarkably diverse array of natural products.

David R. Walt, Tufts University

Award Citation: For inventing and commercializing microwell arrays that benefit research, medicine, and agriculture with tremendous impact on the economy through job and value creation.

Salvatore Torquato, Princeton University

Award Citation: For his numerous, unifying theoretical contributions to the statistical mechanics of liquids and glasses, and how the inter-particle interactions present discriminate among alternative crystal structures.

Eleftherios Terry Papoutsakis, University of Delaware

Award Citation: For technology-enabling fundamental contributions in cell-culture engineering, metabolic engineering, and stem-cell biotechnology.  

Robert A. Moss, Rutgers University

Award Citation: For pioneering research on carbenes, carbocations, diazirines, and reactive intermediates in general, coupled with sustained pedagogical contributions to physical organic chemistry.

Robert Howard Grubbs, California Instititute of Technology

Award Citation: For his fundamental work and revolutionary contributions for converting hydrocarbons to new molecules, polymers, and materials, using olefin metathesis catalysis.  

Thomas Holme, Iowa State University

Award Citation: For his pioneering work in developing curriculum materials for pre-engineering students and advancing our understanding of measurement of student learning in chemistry.  

David L. Clark, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Award Citation: For innovative systematic studies of the fundamental chemistry of actinide elements using novel experimental techniques that give new insights into chemical bonding of 5f electrons.

John E. Bercaw, California Institute of Technology

Award Citation: For the elucidation of detailed mechanisms of organometallic reactions that comprise catalytic cycles.

David J. Nesbitt, JILA/NIST and University of Colorado, Boulder

Award Citation: For his outstanding contributions to the understanding of molecular structures and reaction dynamics by high resolution and single-particle spectroscopic methods.

Stephen R. Leone, University of California, Berkeley

Award Citation: For his pioneering development of femtosecond and attosecond extreme ultraviolet pulse measurements for chemical dynamics.

Neal K. Devaraj, University of California, San Diego

Award Citation: For his outstanding contributions toward the development of tetrazine ligations.