Henkel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Science & Engineering

Nomination Deadline: 25 January of each calendar year

The Henkel Award of Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Science and 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. Previously, this award was called the AkzoNobel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Chemistry. This award is presented annually in the fall at the national ACS meeting during the POLY/PMSE award program.

Award: The winner receives a $2,000 honorarium and travel support to attend the Fall ACS National Meeting in the year of the award to participate in a half-day symposium co-organized by the primary nominator and Prof. Mahesh K. Mahanthappa (maheshkm@umn.edu). In addition, 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. 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 and 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.

Nomination: Nominators must be a member or affiliate of the POLY division 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 1^st author publications from the nominee’s graduate work.

Complete nomination packages collated into a single PDF file containing the above items in the specified order should be sent by email to Prof. Jessica Kramer at jessica.kramer@utah.edu. The email subject line should be “YYYY” Henkel Graduate Award (where “YYYY” is the year of the nomination deadline).

Previous Awardees

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