Henkel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Science and Engineering

Purpose

The Henkel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Science and Engineering is given to recognize a graduate student or recent graduate who has completed an outstanding Ph.D. thesis in polymeric research.

Nature

The award consists of a $2,000 prize, a plaque, and reasonable travel expenses to the Fall National Meeting of the ACS for the presentation. While the award is a recognition of the graduate student, the research advisor will also be recognized during the award presentation.

History

The award was first awarded in 1991 and is operated under the Polymer Education Committee (POLYED), sponsored by the Polymer Chemistry Division and Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering Division. The award has been previously sponsored by Unilever (1991-2003), National Starch (2006-2008) and AzkoNobel (2008-2013). It has since been sponsored by Henkel.

Eligibility

This award is open to post-doctoral candidates with a completed Ph.D. thesis in research accepted by a U.S. or Canadian university during the three-year period prior to Jan. 1 of the award year.

Nominations

Nominees will be judged on the basis of their contribution to the thesis research, the quality and level of innovation demonstrated, and the impact of the research on the science of synthetic polymers or biopolymers.

Nominations must be made by the thesis supervisor or by others familiar with the nominee’s work. The nominating document (5-page limit) must include: (1) the nominee’s biography, (2) a synopsis of the work, and (3) a letter of recommendation from the thesis advisor. Relevant publications based on the thesis work may be submitted. Supporting documents and testimonials may also be included. A PDF file comprising no more than 5 pages should be sent to Dr. Mary Ann Meador (NASA Glenn Research Center): maryann.meador@nasa.gov. Please use “Henkel Graduate Award” in the subject line. The nomination email will be acknowledged if received.

About the Sponsor

Henkel values highly the development of outstanding scientists in the field of polymer science and engineering. Progress in the field is vital for the future development of high performance materials that will enhance current technologies and enable future ones. Thus, Henkel is proud to sponsor this award to demonstrate their commitment recognizing outstanding young scientists.

The winner of the 2018 Henkel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Science and Engineering is Aleksandr V. Zhukhovitskiy. He earned his Ph.D. in 2016 at MIT under the supervision of Prof. Jeremiah A. Johnson for his work at the intersection of organic, organometallic, and polymer chemistry that focused on the surface chemistry of persistent N-heterocyclic carbenes and the self-assembly, structure, and properties of polymer metal-organic cage gels. Dr. Zhukhovitskiy is currently a Life Science Research Foundation Merck Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California–Berkeley working with Prof. F. Dean Toste, where he is exploring gold and metallocarbene chemistries for controlled polymer syntheses.

The 2018 award will be presented during a symposium in honor of Dr. Zhukhovitskiy at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston, MA, August 19–23, 2018 in the Division of Polymeric Materials: Science & Engineering. Award nominations are administered through PolyEd, the joint polymer education committee of the ACS Divisions of Polymer Chemistry and Polymeric Materials: Science & Engineering, with generous financial support from the Henkel Corporation.

The previous sponsorship of this award by Unilever (1991-2003), National Starch (2006 – 2008), and AzkoNobel (2008-2013) is greatly appreciated.

1991
Christopher Gorman
Advised by: Robert Grubbs, California Institute of Technology

1992
Richard Register
Advised by: Stuart Cooper, University of Wisconsin, Madison

1993
Christopher N. Bowman
Advised by: Nicholas Peppas, Purdue University

1994
Timothy J. Deming
Advised by: Bruce Novak, University of California, Berkeley

1995
Rangaramanujam M. Kannan
Advised by: Julia Kornfield, California Institute of Technology

1996
Kristi S. Anseth
Advised by: Christopher Bowman, University of Colorado at Boulder

1997
D.-Y. Kim
Advised by: Sukant K. Tripathy, University of Massachusetts Lowell

1998
James J. Watkins
Advised by: Thomas J. McCarthy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

1999
Scott G. Gaynor
Advised by: Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Carnegie Mellon University

2000
X. Linda Chen
Advised by: Samson A. Jenekhe, University of Rochester

2001
Shu Yang
Advised by: Christopher K. Ober, Cornell University

2002
Kristi Kiick
Advised by: David Tirrell, California Institute of Technology

2003
Christopher Bielawski
Advised by: Robert Grubbs, California Institute of Technology

2006
Jiaxing Huang
Advised by: Richard Kaner, UCLA

2007
Jason Rolland
Advised by: Joseph DiSimone, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2008
Nikolay Tsarevsky
Advised by: Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Carnegie Mellon University

2009
Christopher Bettinger
Advised by: Robert Langer, MIT

2010
Haifeng Gao
Advised by: Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Carnegie Mellon University

2011
Rong Tong
Advised by: Jianjun Cheng, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2012
Garret Miyake
Advised by: Eugene Chen, Colorado State University

2013
Hua Lu
Advised by: Jianjun Cheng, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2014
Felix Kim
Advised by: Samson Jenekhe, University of Washington

2015
Jessica Kramer
Advised by: Tim Deming, University of California, Los Angeles

2016
Maxwell Robb
Advised by: Craig Hawker, University of California, Santa Barbara

2017
John. W. Colson
Advised by: William Dichtel, Cornell University

2018
Aleksandr V. Zhukhovitskiy
Advised by: Jeremiah A. Johnson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology