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UCSB Chemistry Professor Wins National Award
October 12, 2006
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) – Guillermo C. Bazan, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is a winner of The Cope Scholar Award, given by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry. The citation for the award reads, "For his creative design of catalysts for the synthesis of commodity polyolefins and for the synthesis, study, and applications of organic molecules with delocalized electronic structures." Bazan describes the award as recognizing two broad research areas currently under way in his group. In one, Bazan and his team have demonstrated creative new designs for catalysts that convert cheap monomers derived from petrochemical products into valuable everyday materials, such as polyethylene or polypropylene. In the second area of research, his group has tackled several important problems and questions concerning organic molecules with delocalized electronic structures. These are the building blocks for organic semiconductors, which can be used in emerging optoelectronic devices and highly specific biological sensors. The award consists of $5,000, a certificate, and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant to be assigned by the recipient to any university or nonprofit institution. The Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards were established in 1984 by the ACS Board of Directors, on recommendation of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, under the terms of the will of Arthur C. Cope. Bazan obtained his B. S. from the University of Ottawa. His Ph.D. is from MIT. He was a postdoctoral fellow at CalTech, and then joined the UCSB Chemistry Department in July 1998 as a professor of organic chemistry.
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