Deadline for applications: January 25 of each 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 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 familiar with the nominee’s work. Nomination packages should be sent by email to Prof. Jessica Kramer at jessica.kramer@utah.edu The title of the email should be “YYYY” Henkel Graduate Award (where “YYYY” is the year of the nomination deadline) and the following items should be included as a single PDF file :
- Nominee’s biography (or curriculum vitae)
- Synopsis of nominee’s work
- Letter of recommendation from thesis advisor
- Optional: relevant publications based on thesis work
- Optional: supporting documents and testimonials
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 |
For more information about previous awardees, please see:
Outstanding Graduate Research- Previous Awardees 2011-2020