2027 Nomination Deadline: TBA

Statement: Mark received his Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Southern Mississippi in the summer of 2024 as Professor Zhe Qiang’s first graduate student. Mark’s graduate work was centered around developing and understanding the mechanisms that governed a solid-state functionalization method for converting common polymer precursors into high-value products for various applications in environmental remediation and decarbonization. His research efforts have led to multiple awards including the Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research award and the ACS POLY Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research award. He also exercised his entrepreneurial drive as a graduate student through participating as an entrepreneurial lead in the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-CORPS) in regional and national cohorts. Mark is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology under the direction of Professor Christopher Jones where he is exploring new methods for stabilizing aminopolymer-derived sorbents for the direct air capture of CO₂.

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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:

1. Nominee’s Curriculum Vita (CV) including Education & Training, Awards & Honors, List of Publications, List of Conference Presentations, Professional Activities & Affiliations
2. Synopsis of nominee’s graduate work: 2 pages maximum
3. Nomination letter from the thesis advisor: 3 pages maximum
4. Up to two (2) letters supporting the nomination: 2 pages maximum per letter
5. Up to three (3) representative 1^st 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

2025	Elizabeth Murphy	UC, Santa Barbara	Craig Hawker Christopher Bates
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

Outstanding Graduate Research- Previous Awardees 2001-2010

Outstanding Graduate Research- Previous Awardees 1991-2000