ACS announces candidates for 2024 fall elections

The American Chemical Society Committee on Nominations and Elections (N&E) has announced the slate of candidates that will appear on the 2024 ACS fall election ballot. Winning candidates will serve on the ACS Board of Directors from 2025 through 2027.

At the ACS Spring 2024 meeting, the ACS Council selected two candidates to run for 2025 president-elect. Those candidates are Rigoberto Hernandez, a professor of chemistry and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and Laura Sremaniak, a teaching professor and associate department head in the Department of Chemistry at North Carolina State University. They will join a third candidate, Mukund Chorghade, chief scientific officer at Thinq Pharma, who was a petition candidate. The winner will become a member of the presidential succession.

Candidates for other open positions were selected from an election held before the council meeting at ACS Spring 2024.

Candidates for District I director are Matthew Grandbois, strategic partnership manager at DuPont, and Katherine L. Lee, executive director and head of scientific planning and operations in the Inflammation and Immunology Research Unit at Pfizer.

There are three candidates for District V director because of a tie. They are Lisa M. Balbes, an independent consultant at Balbes Consultants; Mark C. Cesa, retired from Ineos Nitriles; and Silvia S. Jurisson, a professor of chemistry and radiology and director of the Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Institute at the University of Missouri.

In November 2023, the board approved and ratified the Petition to Add International Representation on the Board of Directors. The approval of this petition has resulted in a reduction in the total number of directors-at-large (DALs) from six to five starting in 2025.

Candidates for International district director are Hooi-Ling Lee, an associate professor at the School of Chemical Sciences at Universiti Sains Malaysia, and David Wu, director and research fellow at the Institute of Chemistry at Academia Sinica.

Because of the timing for voting on the Petition to Add International Representation, N&E allowed all four candidates to run for the two DAL openings available at the time. But because the petition later passed and one candidate withdrew, three candidates are now vying for one DAL opening. These candidates are Natalie A. LaFranzo, vice president of strategy at the Linus Group; Sergio Nanita, a senior principal investigator at Incyte; and Christopher J. Bannochie, R&D manager at the Savannah River National Laboratory.

Additional candidates may be nominated by petition until July 15, and more in-depth candidate profiles will run in C&EN later in the year.