UChicago scientists receive honors from Simons Foundation, American Chemical Society

The Simons Foundation and the American Chemical Society have honored a quartet of faculty members in the Physical Sciences Division.

The Simons Foundation has named Jeffrey Harvey, the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, as a 2016 Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics. The fellows program provides funds for a faculty member to take up to a semester-long research leave from classroom teaching and administrative obligations to foster creativity and intellectual stimulation. For his Simons project, Harvey is working on new kinds of mathematical moonshine and thinking about ways to connect umbral moonshine and related mathematics to string theory. He also is developing novel mathematical applications of these ideas.

Jacob Waldbauer, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in Geophysical Sciences, has received a Simons Early Career Investigator Award in Marine Microbial Ecology and Evolution. The award seeks to help launch the careers of outstanding investigators who use quantitative approaches to advance the understanding of marine microbial ecology and evolution. Waldbauer’s protect is titled, “Forging the Missing Link: A Protein-Level View of Marine Microbial Ecology.”

One of the American Chemical Society’s 2017 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards will go to Guangbin Dong, professor in chemistry. The Cope Award recognizes and encourages excellence in organic chemistry. Dong will be honored “for his outstanding accomplishments on transition-metal catalyzed synthetic methods involving carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bond activation.”

The 2017 ACS Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry will go to Hisashi Yamamoto, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Chemistry. The Adams Award recognizes and encourages outstanding contributions to research in organic chemistry. Yamamoto, who also is professor and director of the Molecular Catalyst Research Center at Japan’s Chubu University, will receive his award on April 4, 2017 during the 253rd ACS National Meeting in San Francisco.