Baekeland Award to Younan Xia

Younan Xia, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, will receive the ACS North Jersey Section's Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award on Nov. 10. The award will be presented at a banquet that will follow an award symposium. The Baekeland Award consists of a medal and $5,000 and is conferred biennially upon an American chemist under 40 years of age in recognition of accomplishments in pure or industrial chemistry, as characterized by the initiative, creativeness, leadership, and perseverance of the individual and indicated by published or unpublished evidence.

Xia received a B.S. degree in chemical physics from the University of Science & Technology of China (USTC) in 1987 and then worked as a graduate student on nonlinear optical materials for four years at Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Academia Sinica. He came to the U.S. in 1991, received an M.S. in inorganic chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania (with Alan G. MacDiarmid) in 1993, and earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard University (with George M. Whitesides) in 1996. He stayed at Harvard and worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Whitesides and Mara Prentiss. He moved to Seattle in 1997.

His research interests include nanostructured materials; self-assembly; photonic crystals; colloidal chemistry; microfabrication; surface modification; electrospinning; conducting polymers; microfluidic and microanalytical systems; and novel devices for photonics, optoelectronics, and displays.

More information on attending the award festivities, including registration for the symposium and dinner, is online at www.njacs.org/baekeland.html.