Nomination Deadline: January 23, 2026
Statement: Elizabeth Murphy will receive her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara in March 2025 under the co-advisement of Professors Craig Hawker and Christopher Bates. Her graduate work focused on developing a versatile strategy for the accelerated discovery of block copolymers, integrating controlled polymerization, chromatographic separation, laboratory automation, and data-driven analysis. Elizabeth’s research accomplishments have been recognized with several awards, including the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Edward J. Kramer Prize in Materials. Beyond her graduate research, Elizabeth has demonstrated a strong commitment to outreach, where she served as co-president of Chemistry Professional Development and as an outreach ambassador at the UCSB Materials Research Laboratory. Elizabeth will begin her career at The Dow Chemical Company in Collegeville, PA as a Senior Research Specialist in the Formulation, Automation, and Materials Science team.
The Henkel Award for Outstanding Graduate Excellence in Polymer Science & Engineering was established to recognize a PhD graduate student or recent graduate who has completed an outstanding PhD thesis in research at a university in the US or Canada. The award is administered and sponsored by the POLY division of the ACS and the PMSE division of the ACS.
The award was first awarded in 1991 and was 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). Since 2014, it has been sponsored by Henkel Corporation. As of 2017, the award scope was expanded to include nominees across all areas of polymer science and engineering. This award is presented annually in the fall at the national ACS meeting during the POLY/PMSE award program.
Award: The award consists of a plaque, $2,000 honorarium, and travel support to attend the Fall ACS National Meeting in the year of the award. The award winner is invited to participate in a half-day symposium organized by the primary nominator (usually, the awardee’s thesis advisor). Additionally, the award will be presented at the joint POLY/PMSE awards presentation, typically on Wednesday evening.
Eligibility: A nominee must be a member or affiliate of the POLY or PMSE division of ACS and must currently be a PhD candidate or have earned their PhD during the three years prior to January 1 of the award year.
Nomination Deadline: Award nomination package submission deadline is January 24, 2025.
Nomination
Nominators must be a member or affiliate of the ACS POLY or PMSE divisions and must be the nominee’s thesis supervisor or someone intimately familiar with the nominee’s work. A complete nomination package comprises:
- Nominee’s Curriculum Vita (CV) including Education & Training, Awards & Honors, List of Publications, List of Conference Presentations, Professional Activities & Affiliations
- Synopsis of nominee’s graduate work: 2 pages maximum
- Nomination letter from the thesis advisor: 3 pages maximum
- Up to two (2) letters supporting the nomination: 2 pages maximum per letter
- Up to three (3) representative 1st author publications from the nominee’s graduate thesis research.
Nominees are judged on the basis of their contribution to the thesis research, the quality and level of innovation demonstrated, and the impact of their research on the science, engineering, or technology of synthetic polymers or biopolymers. Preference will be given to nominees who have not already been recognized by two or more ACS Awards with associated honorary symposia
Complete nomination packages collated into a single PDF file containing the above items in the specified order should be sent by email to Prof. Patricia Calvo, at pcalvo@ksu.edu. The email subject line should be “YYYY” Henkel Graduate Award (where “YYYY” is the year of the nomination deadline).
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.
Previous Awardees
| 2024 | Shu Wang | Duke University | Stephen L. Craig Michael Rubinstein |
| 2023 | Chris Delre | University of California, Berkeley | Ting Xu |
| 2022 | Jill W. Alty | UNC, Chapel Hill | Frank Leibfarth |
| 2021 | Austin M. Evans | Northwestern | William Dichtel |
| 2020 | Jeffrey Lopez | Stanford | Zhenan Bao |
| 2019 | Jovan Kamcev | UT Austin | Benny Freeman Donald Paul |
| 2018 | Alex Zhukhovitskiy | MIT | Jeremiah Johnson |
| 2017 | John W. Colson | Cornell | William Dichtel |
| 2016 | Maxwell Robb | UCSB | Craig Hawker |
| 2015 | Jessica Kramer | UCLA | Tim Deming |
| 2014 | Felix Sunjoo Kim | University of Washington | Sam Jeneke |
| 2013 | Hua Lu | UIUC | Jianjun Cheng |
| 2012 | Garret Miyake | Colorado State | Eugene Chen |
| 2011 | Rong Tong | UIUC | Jianjun Cheng |
| 2010 | Haifeng Gao | Carnegie Mellon | Krysztof Matyjaszewski |
| 2009 | Christopher J. Bettinger | MIT | Bob Langer |
| 2008 | Nick Tsarevsky | Carnegie Mellon | Krysztof Matyjaszewski |
| 2007 | Jason Rolland | UNC Chapel Hill | Joe DeSimone |
| 2006 | Jiaxing Huang | UCLA | Richard Kaner |
| 2003 | Christopher W. Bielawski | Caltech | Bob Grubbs |
| 2002 | Kristi Kiick | UMass Amherst | Dave Tirrell |
| 2001 | Shu Yang | Cornell | Chris Ober |
| 2000 | Linda Chen | Rochester | Sam Jenekhe |
| 1999 | Scott G. Gaynor | Carnegie Mellon | Kryzstof Matyjaszewski |
| 1998 | James J. Watkins | UMass Amherst | Tom McCarthy |
| 1997 | Dong-Yu Kim | UMass Lowell | Sukant Tripathy |
| 1996 | Kristi S. Anseth | UC Boulder | Chris Bowman |
| 1995 | Rangaramanujam M. Kannan | Caltech | Julia Kornfield |
| 1994 | Tim Deming | UMass Amherst | Bruce Novak |
| 1993 | Chris Bowman | Purdue | Nicholas Peppas |
| 1992 | Rick Register | UW Madison | Stuart Cooper |
| 1991 | Christopher B. Gorman | Caltech | Bob Grubbs |
For more information about previous awardees, please see:
Outstanding Graduate Research- Previous Awardees 2011-2020