Materials Chemistry
Walter Lincoln Hawkins (1911-1992)
Walter Lincoln Hawkins was an American chemist and engineer widely regarded as a pioneer of polymer chemistry. For thirty-four years he worked at Bell Laboratories, where he was instrumental in designing a long-lasting plastic to sheath telephone cables, enabling the introduction of telephone services to thousands of Americans, especially those in rural communities. In addition to his pioneering research, Hawkins is also known for his advocacy efforts for minority students. He also served as the chairman of Montclair State University in 1973. Amongst his many awards, Hawkins was the first African-American to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering (1975), and, shortly before his death in 1992, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology by then-U.S. president, George H. W. Bush.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lincoln_Hawkins; https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/Six-black-chemists-should-know/97/web/2019/02
Henry Aaron Hill (1915-1979)
Henry Aaron Hill became the American Chemical Society’s first African American president in 1977. He is highly regarded for establishing standards for employer-employee relationships in the chemical profession. Early in his career, racial prejudices made it difficult for Hill to land a job. Eventually he would rise to vice president of the North Atlantic Research Corporation in Newtonville, Massachusetts, where he performed research on water-based paints, firefighting foam, and synthetic rubber. In 1962, Hill founded the National Polychemicals, Inc, to supply chemical intermediates for the polymer industry. Ten years later he founded the Riverside Research Laboratories, which offered research, development, and consulting services in polymer production. Hill received his Bachelor of Science degree from Johnson C. Smith University in 1936 and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1942.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/african-americans-in-sciences/henry-aaron-hill.html ; https://aaregistry.org/story/henry-a-hill-pioneer-in-chemistry-led-professional-groups/
Giuliana Tesoro (1921-2002)
Giuliana Cavaglieri Tesoro worked summers for Calico Chemical Company before accepting a position as research chemist at Onyx Oil and Chemical Company in 1944. Here she was promoted to head of the organic synthesis department in 1946, assistant director of research in 1955, and associate director in 1957. She was then appointed assistant director of organic research for J.P. Stevens & Company. Late she moved to the Textile Research Institute for two years. In 1969, she accepted a position as senior chemist at Burlington Industries and was appointed director of chemical research in 1971.
Tesoro made a number of advances in textile processing and organic compounds that improved textile performance for everyday consumers as well as efficiency for manufacturing systems. She developed flame-resistant fibers, designed ways to prevent static accumulation in synthetic fibers, and created improved permanent press properties for textiles.
Ralph Gardner-Chavis (1922-2018)
After earning a degree in chemistry, Gardner-Chavis began work on the Manhattan Project in 1943 as a research assistant at the University of Chicago’s Met Lab. He worked closely with atomic scientist Enrico Fermi and radioactivity scientist Nathan Sugarman, focusing primarily on classified plutonium research critical to the development of the “Fat Man” implosion bomb.
Gardner-Chavis went on to lead Cleveland State University’s Chemistry Department, where he taught full-time from 1968 to 1985. Later, he began employment at Molecular Technology Corporation where he served on the Board of Directors and eventually became Vice President of Research. Dr. Gardner-Chavis currently served as an Associate Professor Emeritus at the Cleveland State University Chemistry Department, where he continued his research in catalysis and molecular technology.
Source: https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/ralph-gardner-chavis; https://aaregistry.org/story/ralph-gardner-chemist-and-scientist-on-the-atomic-bomb/
Stephanie Kwolek (b. 1923)
In 1965, Stephanie Kwolek made an unexpected discovery that led to the creation of synthetic fibers so strong, not even steel bullets could penetrate them. During her analysis of long molecule chains at low temperatures, Kwolek observed how polyamide molecules line up to form liquid crystalline polymer solutions of exceptional strength and stiffness. That discovery made way for Kwolek’s invention of industrial fibers that today protect and save thousands of lives. Most notable among these is Kevlar®, a heat-resistant material that’s five times stronger than steel, but lighter than fiberglass. Today, Kevlar® is used in hundreds of products, including bulletproof vests, spacecrafts, helmets, tennis racquets, tires, and protective gloves.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/stephanie-kwolek.html
Esther A. Hopkins (1926-2021)
Chemist, city council member, and patent attorney Esther Arvilla Harrison Hopkins was born on September 18, 1926 in Stamford, Connecticut. Working as household servants, Hopkins’s parents encouraged her and her siblings to pursue their education. In 1947, Hopkins graduated from Boston University with her B.A. degree in chemistry. Just two years later, she obtained her M.S. degree in chemistry from Howard University.
Hopkins worked with companies such as the New England Institute for Medical Research as an assistant researcher in biophysics and the American Cyanamid Stamford Research Laboratory as a research chemist. Hopkins studied at Yale University, where she received her second M.S. degree in chemistry and her Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 1962 and 1967, respectively. She continued her work at the American Cyanamid Stamford Research Laboratory while she earned these degrees.
Hopkins was hired as a supervisory research chemist with the Polaroid Corporation, where she led the Emulsion Coating and Analysis Laboratory, checking the chemical composition of the film coating for uniformity. During this time, Hopkins also developed an interest in the work of the patent department and returned to school. She received her J.D. degree from Suffolk University Law School. Hopkins retired from Polaroid Corporation in 1989 and began work as the deputy general counsel at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. In 1999, Hopkins became the first African American selectman of Framingham, Massachusetts.
Source: https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/esther-ah-hopkins; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_A._Hopkins
Edith Flanigen (b. 1929)
Edith Marie Flanigen is a noted American chemist, known for her work on synthesis of emeralds, and later zeolites for molecular sieves at Union Carbide. Flanigen received an M.S. in inorganic physical chemistry in 1952.
In 1956 Flanigen began working on molecular sieves. Molecular sieves are crystal compounds with molecular sized pores that can filter or separate very complex substances. Edith Flanigen is best known as the inventor of zeolite Y, a specific molecular sieve. Zeolite Y was a certain type of molecular sieve that could refine petroleum. When refining "crude oil", or petroleum, it must be separated into all of its different parts, or fractions. Gasoline is one of the many fractions that come from refining petroleum. Flanigen's zeolites are used as catalysts, or a substance that enhances chemical reactions. Zeolite Y is a catalyst that enhances the amount of gasoline fractioned from petroleum, making refining petroleum safer and more productive.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_M._Flanigen; https://www.invent.org/inductees/edith-flanigen
Patsy Sherman (1930-2008)
Sherman was a 1952 alumnus of Gustavus Adolphus College located in St. Peter, Minnesota. She was the co-inventor along with Samuel Smith of Scotchgard while an employee of the 3M corporation in 1952. Sherman remained at 3M for several years improving on Scotchgard and developed other uses for the product. Scotchgard would become, arguably, the most famous and widely used stain repellent and soil removal product in North America.
An accidental spill of a fluorochemical rubber on an assistant’s tennis shoe was the beginning to the invention of the product. After exhaustive attempts to remove the spill failed, Sherman moved her intention from removing the spill to using the spill as a protectant from spills. Sherman and Smith received US 3574791 on April 13, 1971, for "invention of block and graft copolymers containing water-solvatable polar groups and fluoroaliphatic groups." Sherman holds 13 patents with Smith in fluorochemical polymers and polymerization processes.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patsy_O%27Connell_Sherman
Bettye Washington Greene (1935-1995)
Bettye Washington Greene was an American industrial research chemist. She was the first African American female Ph.D. chemist to work in a professional position at the Dow Chemical Company. At Dow, she researched latex and polymers. Dr. Greene is considered an early African American pioneer in science.
Dr. Greene filed for several patents during her career at Dow Chemical. In 1985, she was issued a patent entitled "Stable latexes containing phosphorus surface groups" describing a method of preparing a paper coating composition comprising the addition of from about 2 to about 30 percent of a modified latex containing phosphorus surface groups. In 1986, she was issued a follow-up patent entitled "Composite sheet prepared with stable latexes containing phosphorus surface groups" also employing emulsion polymerization techniques for preparing modified latex. In 1990, Dr. Greene was issued a patent entitled "Latex based adhesive prepared by emulsion polymerization" for the invention of a latex based pressure sensitive adhesive for coating conventional substrates to form an adhesive tape.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettye_Washington_Greene; https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/Six-black-chemists-should-know/97/web/2019/02
Hideo Komada
The 1980s are when 3D printing ideas became reality. Unfortunately, the first half of the decade was filled with promising patents from investors that either ran out of money or were financed by groups that failed to see any commercial applications that could recoup their investment.
The first prominent patent of the decade was filed by Japanese inventor Dr. Hideo Kodama in 1981. He described his invention as a “rapid prototyping device”. More importantly, he was the first person to ever apply for a patent that described a laser beam curing process. Sadly, his patent never went through as he abandoned financing the patent one year after filing it.
Source: https://all3dp.com/2/history-of-3d-printing-when-was-3d-printing-invented/; https://manufactur3dmag.com/a-brief-history-of-3d-printing/#Late_1970s_to_End_of_1980s
Adi Eisenberg (1935-2022)
A Holocaust survivor, Dr. Eisenberg has earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1960, worked as a NATO post-doctoral fellow at the University of Basel with Werner Kuhn (1961-1962), and joined UCLA in 1962 as an Assistant Professor. He moved to McGill as an Associate Professor in 1967, where he was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1975 and was named Otto Maass Chair in 1992. Adi retired in 2009 but continued his NSERC-funded research long after his retirement.
Dr. Eisenberg is widely recognized as a pioneer of the field of amphiphilic block copolymers which now find numerous applications in drug delivery, materials science, and nanotechnology. During his career at McGill, he has published over 400 papers and has become the most cited chemist in the history of the Department. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and received numerous awards, including Killam Research Fellowship, E. W. R. Steacie Award, Urgel Archambault Prize from ACFAS, Humboldt Research Award, and Canadian Institute of Chemistry (CIC) Medal.
Source: https://www.mcgill.ca/chemistry/channels/news/passing-professor-emeritus-adi-eisenberg-1935-2022-336467; https://www.rcptm.com/lectures/prof-dr-adi-eisenberg/
Hideki Shirakawa (b. 1936)
In 1976, he was invited to work in the laboratory of Alan MacDiarmid as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. The two developed the electrical conductivity of polyacetylene along with American physicist Alan Heeger.
In 1977 they discovered that doping with iodine vapor could enhance the conductivity of polyacetylene. The three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 in recognition of the discovery. With regard to the mechanism of electric conduction, it is strongly believed that nonlinear excitations in the form of solitons play a role.
Patricia E. Bath (1942-2019)
Patricia E. Bath, an ophthalmologist and laser scientist, was an innovative research scientist and advocate for blindness prevention, treatment, and cure. Her accomplishments include the invention of a new device and technique for cataract surgery known as laserphaco, the creation of a new discipline known as "community ophthalmology," and appointment as the first woman chair of ophthalmology in the United States, at Drew-UCLA in 1983.
She also became the first woman member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American person to serve as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University. She was also the first African-American woman to serve on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. A holder of five patents, she also founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C
Source: https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_26.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Bath
Uma Chowdhry (b. 1947)
An ambitious teenager, Uma Chowdhry—determined to win a Nobel Prize—left her home in India to study chemistry in the United States. But after falling in love with materials science, the study of solids at the molecular level, Chowdhry decided to work in industrial research. She was fascinated by the possibility that her findings might end up in a practical application on the open market.
At DuPont, Chowdhry studied new materials, helping to create superconductors, or materials that have no resistance to electrical current at temperatures near absolute zero. The technologies she contributed to and later managed are now part of electronic packaging, photovoltaics, batteries, biofuel, and many sustainable products that fundamentally change the way we use everyday things.
Source: https://www.sciencehistory.org/women-in-chemistry; Image by Science History Institute, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28989215.
Akira Yoshino (b. 1948)
Akira Yoshino was born in Suita, Japan. After studying technology at Kyoto University, he began working at the Asahi Kasei chemical company in 1972, with which he has been associated throughout his non-academic career. Since 2005 he has headed his own laboratory at Asahi Kasei. Yoshino received his doctorate at Osaka University in 2005 and has been a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya since 2017.
Storing electrical energy in batteries is a key factor in solving the world's energy supply. The element lithium is useful in batteries since it willingly releases electrons. In 1985 Akira Yoshino developed a battery with an anode of petroleum coke, a carbon material which, at a molecular level, has spaces that can house lithium ions. This was the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery. Such batteries are widely used in electrical equipment, for example mobile phones and electric cars. He won the 2019 Noble Prize in Chemistry for his work.
Source:https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/yoshino/facts/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Yoshino
Luis Echegoyen (b. 1951)
Echegoyen's research focuses on new materials, complexes of Fullerenes, recognition complexes, and self-assembly. He is the Robert A. Welch Chair Professor at the University of Texas El Paso. Director of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation (2006-2010). 2003 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2020 President of the American Chemical Society.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1285257960818647042 , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Echegoyen
Oswaldo Luiz Alves
Full Professor at the Institute of Chemistry University of Campinas. Member of The World Academy of Science - TWAS. Dr. Alves is worldwide recognized for the development of speical glasses for optoelectronics; in nanotechnology, especially nanoparticles; and active interaction with productive sector. He was awarded Scientist of the Year (2016) in the nanotechnology modality from the Nanocell Institute.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1285639343089033217; https://www.sbpmat.org.br/en/gente-da-nossa-comunidade-entrevista-com-o-cientista-oswaldo-luiz-alves/
Héctor D. Abruña (b. 1953)
Director of Energy Material Center and Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He conducts research into battery and fuel cell systems using electrochemical techniques and X-ray microscopy and spectroscopy methods.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1287822307184930818 Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9ctor_D._Abru%C3%B1a
Paula T. Hammond (b. 1963)
Chemistry captured Hammond’s imagination when she was 15. She’d planned to be a writer, but her favorite high-school chemistry teacher piqued her curiosity by explaining how two elements could be combined to create an entirely new substance. Hammond went on to excel in chemistry at MIT, one of the most rigorous scientific universities in the world, at a time when women still made up only one-fifth of the student body and there were even fewer students of color. She followed her fascination with new materials by studying nanotechnology—the creation of technologies that work at the molecular or atomic level. She has found polymers that increase the amount of power held by solar cells and created materials that reorganize their own molecules.
In 2002 Hammond cofounded the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology, where she and her partners use their scientific know-how to make troops safer on the ground. One of her discoveries is a spray coating that helps blood clot almost instantly, a technology that could save thousands of lives and limbs a year on the battlefield.
Source: https://www.sciencehistory.org/women-in-chemistry; Image by https://ki.mit.edu/people/faculty/hammond
Linda Nazar
Linda Faye Nazar is a Senior Canada Research Chair in Solid State Materials and Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo. She was awarded the 2019 Chemical Institute of Canada Medal. Linda Nazar carries out research in inorganic materials chemistry, solid state chemistry and electrochemistry. Her research is focused on the development of electrochemical energy storage devices and materials.
One of the most interesting aspects of materials chemistry is the design of structures with specific physical properties. Using guided principles, Prof. Nazar’s team synthesizes new materials, determines their structures and investigates their physical properties. She is, in particular, interested in ion and electron transport in materials as these properties are central to solid state electrochemistry and energy storage batteries.
Source: https://uwaterloo.ca/chemistry/people-profiles/linda-nazar; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Nazar
Susannah Scott
Susannah L. Scott is a Canadian-American chemist who is Professor of Surface Chemistry and the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Chair in Sustainable Catalysis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She serves as an Executive Editor of ACS Catalysis and is a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Scott's research considers the design of heterogeneous catalysts for the efficient conversion of feedstocks and catalysts that improve the environment. The design of heterogenous catalysts is limited because of the lack of information about the identities of the active sites. To overcome these shortcomings, Scott has created model catalysts with precisely controlled local structures. She has created models of the active sites for the polymerisation of olefin and metathesis.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susannah_Scott; https://www.chem.uci.edu/node/21467
Catherine J. Murphy (b. 1964)
Catherine "Cathy" J. Murphy (born 1964) is an American chemist and materials scientist, the Larry Faulkner Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Murphy earned her doctorate degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison under the direction of Arthur B. Ellis in 1990. Her graduate work focused on the surface chemistry of semiconductors. Murphy completed postdoctoral work as a NSF and NIH postdoctoral fellow under the advisement of Jacqueline Barton at the California Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1993.
Her research focuses on inorganic nanomaterials and the biophysical properties of DNA. Murphy is known for her work on the seed-mediated synthesis of gold nanorods of controlled aspect ratio. Her laboratory has developed the surface chemistry, biological applications, and environmental implications of these nanomaterials
Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_J._Murphy; https://chemistry.illinois.edu/murphycj
Omar M. Yaghi (b. 1965)
Omar M. Yaghi (Arabic: عمر مونّس ياغي) was born in Amman, Jordan in 1965 to a refugee family, originally from Mandatory Palestine. He grew up in a household with many children, but only had limited access to clean water and without electricity. At the age of 15, he moved to the United States at the encouragement of his father. He began his graduate studies at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and received his PhD in 1990 under the guidance of Walter G. Klemperer.
Yaghi pioneered reticular chemistry, a new field of chemistry concerned with stitching molecular building blocks together by strong bonds to make open frameworks. His most recognizable work is in the design and production of new classes of compounds known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). MOFs are noted for their extremely high surface areas (5640 m2/g for MOF-177) and very low crystalline densities (0.17 g·cm−3 for COF-108). Yaghi also pioneered molecular weaving, and synthesized the world’s first material woven at the atomic and molecular levels (COF-505). He is the second most cited chemist in the world (2000–2010).
Joanna Aizenberg
Aizenberg is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the co-director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. She is a prominent figure in the field of biologically inspired materials science, having authored 90 publications and holding 25 patents.
The most exciting area of chemistry from Aizenberg’s perspective is in the area of materials, molecules, polymers, and hybrid systems that have the ability to adjust and self-regulate—things that can change their properties in response to their environment. These are the properties in natural systems, she says, that “we are still very far away from being able to reproduce.” But she’s working on it.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Aizenberg; https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i33/How-to-create-materials-that-mimic-Mother-Nature.html
Jackie Yi-Ru Ying (b. 1966)
Jackie Yi-Ru Ying is an American nanotechnology scientist and the founding executive director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore. She then attended Princeton University, receiving her MA in 1988 and her PhD in 1991, both in chemical engineering. Ying became a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1992. She was made a full professor in 2001; at 35 she was one of MIT's youngest full professors.
Prof. Ying’s research is interdisciplinary in nature, with a theme in the synthesis of advanced nanostructured materials for biological, medical, catalytic and energy applications. Her laboratory has been responsible for several novel wet-chemical and physical vapor synthesis approaches that create nanocomposites, nanoporous materials and nanodevices with unique size-dependent characteristics. These new systems are designed for applications ranging from biosensors and diagnostics, immunotherapy and targeted delivery of drugs, cell culture substrates and biomaterials, in vitro toxicology and drug screening, pharmaceuticals and chemicals synthesis, to battery and fuel cells.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Yi-Ru_Ying; https://www.nae.edu/141142/Dr-Jackie-Y-Ying; https://www.a-star.edu.sg/nbl/research-leadership
Sossina M. Haile(b. 1966)
Sossina M. Haile (Ge'ez: ሶስና ሃይሌ) is an American chemist and is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA. Haile was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1966. Her family fled Ethiopia during the coup in the mid-'70s, after soldiers arrested and nearly killed her historian father Getatchew Haile who at the time was a member of the transitional Ethiopian parliament. Around age 10, the family settled in rural Minnesota where Haile attended Saint John's Preparatory School (Collegeville, MN), graduating in 1983.
She is known for developing the first solid acid fuel cells. Haile's research centers on ionic conduction in solids. Her objectives are to understand the mechanisms that govern ion transport and to apply that understanding to the development of advanced solid electrolytes and novel solid-state electrochemical devices. Applications of fast ion conductors include batteries, sensors, ion pumps, and fuel cells.
Source: http://www.tadias.com/01/18/2011/outstanding-women-in-science-interview-with-professor-sossina-haile/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sossina_M._Haile
Molly Shoichet
A professor of chemistry and biomaterials and biomedical engineering, Dr. Molly Shoichet was named North American winner of the L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science award for the development of new materials to regenerate damaged nerve tissue and for a new method that can deliver drugs directly to the spinal cord and brain.
An expert in the study of polymers for drug delivery and regeneration, Dr. Shoichet has been tackling the problem of the blood-brain barrier, a tightly interwoven network of cells that protects the central nervous system from toxins but can block helpful medications. Her novel solution is to deliver drugs in a gel-like polymer that can be injected directly into the cerebrospinal fluid and then remain near its injection point where the therapy is most effective. The team she leads has also created a polymer for the targeted delivery of drugs and antibodies in breast cancer.
Carelyn E. Campbell
As an undergraduate in materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, Campbell was drawn to metallurgy, which she likens to her hobby of baking: by taking different metals and mixing them in specific proportions, you can process them and create an alloy that has unique properties that are different from its individual elements. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Campbell develops new alloys, such as high-strength steels and high-performance superalloys for turbine blades.
Last year, NIST awarded Campbell and a colleague, materials research engineer Mark Stoudt, a medal for their work on developing three patented coinage alloys for the US Mint, one of which is the lowest-cost alternative the Mint has identified for the 5-cent nickel. Prachi Patel spoke with Campbell about the work that went into these new alloys and about her latest endeavors.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/people/carelyn-e-campbell; https://cen.acs.org/materials/NIST-materials-scientist-makes-new/99/i43
Valerie Sheares Ashby
Valerie Sheares Ashby is Dean of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US. She leads 640 faculty across 36 departments in fields ranging across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.
As a researcher, Ashby’s work focused on synthetic polymer chemistry with a present focus on designing and synthesizing materials for biomedical applications such as X-ray contrast agents and drug delivery materials. She is the recipient of the National Science Foundation Career Development Award, the DuPont Young Faculty and 3M Young Faculty Awards.
As an educator, she was recognized with the UNC Chapel Hill General Alumni Association Faculty Service Award, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching and research, the J. Carlyle Sitterson Freshman Teaching Award, the UNC Student Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Johnston Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching.
Amy Lucia Prieto
Dr. Pierto is a Professor of Chemistry at Colorado State University and the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Prieto Battery. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, received the 2012 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers, the 2004 L'Oréal USA for Women in Science Fellowship. She is currently developing a porous copper solid-state battery that charge faster and store more energy that traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Source: https://twitter.com/LatinXChem/status/1285968194906333186
Lynden Archer
Lynden A. Archer is a chemical engineer, Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering, David Croll Director of the Energy Systems Institute, and professor of chemical engineering at Cornell University. He became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007 and was elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 2018. His h-index is 84 by Google Scholar.
Archer's research is focused on transport properties of polymers and organic-inorganic hybrid materials, as well as their applications for energy storage and carbon capture technologies. His research spans several different battery components.
Emilie Ringe
In 2018, Emilie Ringe had a pivotal year in her work with plasmonic nanoparticles. These tiny specks of matter act like antennas for light, gathering and concentrating energy that can be used to trigger chemical reactions or kill cancerous cells. The nanoparticles are often made from expensive metals like gold and silver, but Ringe discovered a way to use cheap and abundant magnesium in their place. “It was the start of most of the things we do now,” says Ringe, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge.
A plasmonic nanoparticle is a stiff lattice of positive ions in a sea of electrons, she explains. When light of just the right frequency hits the particle, it sets the electrons in resonant motion—like a parent pushing a child higher and higher on a playground swing. “These electrons sloshing backwards and forwards are superefficient at capturing light,” Ringe says. The particles focus energy so they can drive chemical reactions and other processes at their surface. “You can boil water with these particles just by shining light on them,” she says.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/materials/nanomaterials/Emilie-Ringe/99/i30; https://www.on.msm.cam.ac.uk/people.html; https://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/people/ringe
Charlie Wand
Charlie Wand was always going to be a scientist. When he was 4, he would set up “experiments’’ all around the house—things like dishes of water to see which would evaporate first. His mother, a university lecturer in mathematics, “put up with me doing all sorts of things like that,” Wand says. She encouraged him, telling him anyone can do science. Today, Wand is a computational chemist and a lecturer in the department of natural sciences at the University of Exeter. He works at the intersection of chemistry, physics, and engineering, using computers to look at the physical properties of molecules and how they behave on the nanoscale.
As a bisexual trans man, Wand knows that identities intersect, and his identity as a scientist is connected to his other identities. He is also committed to promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion within academia and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in particular.
Source: https://engineering.exeter.ac.uk/staff/cw947; https://cen.acs.org/articles/100/i12/Charlie-Wand-uses-simulations-to-study-molecules-behavior.html
Thomas F. Jaramillo
Thomas Francisco Jaramillo is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis at Stanford University. A native of Puerto Rico, Prof. Jaramillo first came to Stanford University to pursue his B.S. in Chemical Engineering, followed by graduate school at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) where he earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. Prof. Jaramillo then conducted post-doctoral research in the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) as a Hans Christian Ørsted Post-doctoral Fellow prior to returning to Stanford to embark on his independent research career.
Prof. Jaramillo’s research efforts are aimed at developing materials and processes that can accelerate important chemical transformations related to energy conversion with improved efficiency and durability. The overarching theme is the development of cost-effective, clean energy technologies that can benefit societal and economic growth while minimizing impacts to the environment. In pursuit of these goals, Prof. Jaramillo conducts fundamental studies into semiconductors and catalyst materials to understand the physical and chemical factors that govern their performance, insights which he then leverages to engineer improved materials and devices for sustainable energy.
Source: https://energy.ucdavis.edu/jaramillo-thomas/; https://profiles.stanford.edu/thomas-jaramillo
Natia Frank
Natia Frank wants to reduce the energy consumption of future computers. The University of Victoria chemist designs and studies novel organic electronic materials, and she recently developed a material that allows computers to write data with light instead of electric current. The material, made of a cobalt dioxolene coupled to a spirooxazine, makes possible a next-generation computer memory known as light-induced random access memory. LI-RAM would be faster than current forms of RAM, require less power, and work for both short-term data processing and long-term data storage. Frank talked with Louisa Dalton about how her LI-RAM material came to be and where she gets her ideas.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i6/Building-path-toward-computer-memory.html; https://www.uvic.ca/science/chemistry/people/faculty/natia_frank.php
Joana D'Arc Fēlix de Sousa
Joana D’Arc Félix de Sousa firmly believes in science as a tool for positive social impact. Raised by a tanner and a housemaid in Franca, in the interior of Brazil, she went on to earn a PhD in chemistry from the University of Campinas. She then did postdoctoral research at Harvard University.
She is listed as an inventor on 15 patents. Among her inventions is a way to treat pigskin to remove fat and protein to make it less likely to be rejected when used for skin grafts in humans.
Félix de Sousa returned to Brazil in 2002 and took a teaching position at Professor Carmelino Corrêa Júnior Technical School in Franca, where she has involved students in research to turn tannery waste into fertilizer and a cement for bone reconstruction, as well as to develop a dermatological shoe that releases antimicrobial enzymes to treat diabetes-caused foot cracks.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/careers/women-in-science/Brazilian-chemist-Joana-DArc-Flix/97/i10
Luisa Whittaker-Brooks
Luisa's team at the University of Utah is exploring a variety of materials to bolster electronic devices, including solar cells and batteries. And the idea isn't just to make these technologies work better but also to make them do more by bringing optimized, advanced materials together in next-gen, multitasking products.
Whittaker-Brooks's group is also developing materials that generate electrical energy from heat, potentially providing another power source that works in the dark. Ultimately, the team's goal is to bring all these materials together in a single device to deliver uninterrupted, sustainable energy.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/materials/Luisa-Whittaker-Brooks/96/i33
Angela Belcher
Belcher has turned to the M13 phage to build materials from the bottom up, inspired by the way sea creatures evolved the ability to construct their shells in various shapes. “There’s an ability to nucleate and control materials on nanometer length scales that has been working for 500 million years,” Belcher says. “We’re just borrowing from that.”
By gaining fine control over the nanostructure of various materials, she’s trying to solve problems in medicine, energy, and the environment. These virus-based production processes run in water at low temperatures and low pressures, so they’re naturally more environmentally friendly than some older industrial processes, she says.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i11/From-building-batterries-to-combating-cancer-How-Angela-Belcher-puts-viruses-to-work.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Belcher
Cathy Mulzer
Cathy's work in Dichtel's group (Ph.D. adviser at Cornell University) is a prime example of these qualities. She investigated an emerging class of materials known as covalent organic frameworks, or COFs. COFs are porous crystalline polymers with insanely high surface areas, which make them attractive for things like catalysis and gas storage and separation. Mulzer reasoned that because of their vast surface areas, COFs would also provide a wealth of parking spots for electrical charge carriers, making them attractive candidates for energy storage applications.
But existing COFs couldn't do the electrochemistry needed to shuttle those charges around—a necessity for energy storage. So step one for Mulzer and her colleagues was to synthesize a COF with redox active sites, which the team achieved with help from anthraquinone building blocks.
To help charges get where they needed to go within the polymer, she learned to grow oriented thin films of the COF and then infiltrate its pores with conducting polymer. That 3% figure ballooned to 100%, she says, greatly boosting the COF's electrochemical performance.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/materials/electronic-materials/Cathy-Mulzer/96/i33
Kiara Nighin
“Ever since I was young, I was interested in asking questions about how the world worked,” says 19 year-old Kiara Nirghin, winner of 2016 Google Science Fair for creating a super absorbent polymer that can retain over 100 times its mass — potentially revolutionizing water conservation and sustaining crops through periods of drought. Best yet: it’s low-cost and biodegradable, made of orange peels and avocado skins.
Nirghin’s interest in water conservation stems from her experience of the 2015 drought in her home country of South Africa. She was struck to see water dams, once full to the brim, run dry, and she felt frustrated by the lack of solutions to the problem. Nirghin continues her research and studies at the University of Stanford and advocates for young girls to pursue their STEM interests: “Getting girls involved in science should be on everyone’s agenda. I think that every idea fundamentally has the power to change our world.”
Source: https://www.kiaranirghin.com/; https://un-women.medium.com/devoted-to-discovery-seven-women-scientists-who-have-shaped-our-world-a1b9893ccbe1
Derya Baran
Professor Baran's research interests lie in the area of solution processable organic/hybrid soft materials for electronic devices. Such soft semiconductor materials possess a viable platform for printed, large area, stretchable and wearable electronics that can be used as solar cells, smart windows, OFETs, thermoelectrics, sensors and bio-electronics.
Professor Baran is particularly interested in interface engineering for organic/hybrid solar cells, transparent solar cells for building integrated photovoltaics and stability/degradation studies for long lifetime organic solar cells. She has led projects on i) conjugated polymers for electrochromic devices; ii) non-fullerene acceptors for organic solar cells; iii) multi-component and multi-layered solar cell devices; and iv) understanding the correlation between recombination and nano-morphology in solution processed solar cells.
Professor Baran aims to expand the applications of solution processable organic/hybrid semiconductors and to explore their limits in organic/hybrid thermoelectric devices and bio-electronics in the future.
Source: https://www.kaust.edu.sa/en/study/faculty/derya-baran; https://cen.acs.org/materials/electronic-materials/Derya-Baran/99/i30