Michael Smith was a British-born Canadian biochemist and businessman. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis for his work in developing site-directed mutagenesis. Following a PhD in 1956 from the University of Manchester, he undertook postdoctoral research with Har Gobind Khorana at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Subsequently, Smith worked at the Fisheries Research Board of Canada Laboratory in Vancouver before being appointed a professor of biochemistry in the UBC Faculty of Medicine in 1966. Smith's career included roles as the founding director of the UBC Biotechnology Laboratory and the founding scientific leader of the Protein Engineering Network of Centres of Excellence (PENCE). In 1996 he was named Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology. Subsequently, he became the founding director of the Genome Sequencing Centre at the BC Cancer Research Centre.
Kendall Newcomb Houk is a Distinguished Research Professor in Organic Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research group studies organic, organometallic, and biological reactions using the tools of computational chemistry. This work involves quantum mechanical calculations, often with density functional theory, and molecular dynamics, either quantum dynamics for small systems or force fields such as AMBER, for solution and protein simulations.
Dale Lester Boger is an American medicinal and organic chemist and former chair of the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA.
Richard James Saykally is an American chemist. He is currently the Class of 1932 Endowed Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He has received numerous awards for his research on the molecular characteristics of water and aqueous solutions.
Edison T. Liu, M.D. is the former president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, and the former director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center (2012-2021). As CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, the organization doubled revenue, faculty and personnel, expanded globally from two campuses to six, established 13 endowed chairs, and increased the institutional endowment by five-fold. He is currently a Professor and Honorary Fellow at the institution. Before joining The Jackson Laboratory, he was the founding executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), chairman of the board of the Health Sciences Authority, and president of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) (2007-2013). As the executive director of the GIS, he brought the institution to international prominence as one of the most productive genomics institutions in the world.
Eiichi Nakamura is a Japanese chemist and professor of chemistry at University of Tokyo in Japan.
Richard B. Kaner is an American synthetic inorganic chemist. He is a distinguished professor and the Dr. Myung Ki Hong Endowed Chair in Materials Innovation at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Department of Material Science and Engineering. Kaner conducts research on conductive polymers (polyaniline), superhard materials and carbon compounds, such as fullerenes and graphene.
Alanna Schepartz is an American professor and scientist. She is currently the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly the Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University.
Peidong Yang is a Chinese-American chemist, material scientist, and businessman. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Science. His research group studies the synthesis of nanomaterials and their electronic and optical properties. He is also a Department Head at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Deputy Director of the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems (COINS). He is an associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, an American Chemical Society Journal.
Younan Xia is a Chinese-American chemist, materials scientist, and bioengineer. He is the Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, with joint appointments in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry, the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, and Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Guillermo Carlos Bazan is an American chemist, material scientist, and academic.
Yitzhak Apeloig is a pioneer in the computational chemistry field of the Ab initio quantum chemistry methods for predicting and preparing the physical and chemical properties of materials. He was the president of the Technion from 2001 until 2009 where the position was handed off to Peretz Lavie. Distinguished Prof. Apeloig currently holds the Joseph Israel Freund Chair in Chemistry and is the co-director of the Lise Meitner Minerva Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the Technion. He served as dean of the Faculty of Chemistry from 1995 to 1999, where he was named Teacher of the Year at three occasions.
Catherine "Cathy" J. Murphy is an American chemist and materials scientist, and is the Larry Faulkner Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The first woman to serve as the Head of the Department of Chemistry at UIUC, Murphy is known for her work on nanomaterials, specifically the seed-mediated synthesis of gold nanorods of controlled aspect ratio. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
Stephen L. Buchwald is a U.S. chemist and Camille Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at MIT. He is known for his involvement in the development of the Buchwald-Hartwig amination and the discovery of the dialkylbiaryl phosphine ligand family for promoting this reaction and related transformations. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 and 2008, respectively.
Ann M. Valentine is an American bioinorganic chemist whose research focuses on biomineralization, the uptake and transport of metals and their medical applications in areas such as cancer research. She has received awards including the 2014 AICChemical Pioneer Award "for her outstanding contributions towards advancing the science of chemistry and impacting the chemical profession" and the 2009 Paul D. Saltman Award for Metals in Biology for "outstanding contributions to the field of metals in biology" and "groundbreaking work on the structures and reactions of complexes containing titanium."
Vincent Rotello is an American materials scientist and engineer currently the Charles A. Goessmann Professor of Chemistry and a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the current Editor-in-Chief of American Chemical Society's Bioconjugate Chemistry. He joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts in 1993, and has been the recipient of the NSF CAREER and Cottrell Scholar awards, as well as the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, the Sloan Fellowships. More recently, he has received the Langmuir Lectureship (2010), and in 2016 he received the Transformational Research and Excellence in Education Award presented by Research Corporation, the Bioorganic Lectureship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the Australian Nanotechnology Network Traveling Fellowship, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, President's International Fellowship for Distinguished Researchers. He is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and of the Royal Society of Chemistry (U.K.). He is also recognized in 2014, 2015 and 2018 by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate as “Highly Cited Researcher”. He is currently the Editor in Chief of Bioconjugate Chemistry, and is on the Editorial Board of 14 other journals. His research program focuses on using synthetic organic chemistry to engineer the interface between the synthetic and biological worlds, and spans the areas of devices, polymers, and nanotechnology/bionanotechnology, with over 550 peer-reviewed papers published to date. He is actively involved in the area of bionanotechnology, and his research includes programs in delivery, imaging, diagnostics and nanotoxicology.
Gregory A. Voth is a theoretical chemist and Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He is also a Professor of the James Franck Institute and the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.
James L. Skinner is an American theoretical chemist. He is the Joseph O. and Elizabeth S. Hirschfelder Professor Emeritus at the University Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Welch Foundation. Most recently, Skinner was the Crown Family Professor of Molecular Engineering, Professor of Chemistry, Director of the Water Research Initiative and Deputy Dean for Faculty Affairs of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Skinner is recognized for his contributions to the fields of theoretical chemistry, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, linear and nonlinear spectroscopy of liquids, amorphous and crystalline solids, surfaces, proteins, and supercritical fluids. Skinner is the co-author of over 230 peer-reviewed research articles.
Robert J. Cousins is an American nutritional biochemist who has researched the metabolism of heavy metals, especially zinc. He has served as president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and the American Society for Nutrition (ASN). He was recognized with membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 and served as editor of the Annual Review of Nutrition for ten years.
Neal K. Devaraj is an American chemist and professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). His research interests include artificial cells, lipid membranes, and bioconjugation.
