Harvard postdoctoral fellow Steven Lopez (PhD ‘15 UCLA Organic Chemistry, Houk Group) was awarded the 2016 Norma Stoddart Prize on Friday, April 29th.
Dr. Lopez, currently in Prof. Alán Aspuru-Guzik’s group at Harvard, was selected by a committee of peers as the recipient of the 2016 Norma Stoddart Prize for Academic Excellence and Outstanding Citizenship, which is open to all current and recently graduated research students and fellows in the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The prize was established by UCLA Emeritus Professor of Chemistry Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and his family to honor his late wife Dr. Norma Agnes Stoddart.
In his introduction of Dr. Lopez, his former Ph.D. mentor Prof. Ken Houk (left) spoke of Dr. Lopez’s outstanding computational quantum mechanical modelling and molecular dynamics research. (Right) Chair and Prof. Miguel Garcia-Garibay introduced Sir Fraser Stoddart.
Profs. Ellen Sletten and Ken Houk and Dr. Lopez listen to Prof. Stoddart (right) speak about his late wife’s many accomplishments and her impact on his career and life.
(From left) Prof. Ken Houk, Dr. Steven Lopez, Sir Fraser Stoddart, Chair and Prof. Miguel Garcia-Garibay pose with the award.
Following the award presentation, Dr. Lopez presented his 2016 Normal Stoddart Prize lecture, “In Silico High-Throughput Screening of Non-Fullerene Acceptor Materials for Organic Photovoltaic Devices: A Harvard Clean Energy Project Study”.
While at UCLA, Dr. Lopez was president of the UCLA Organization for Cultural Diversity in Chemistry graduate student group where he was instrumental in the expansion of the group to the campus-wide Organization for Cultural Diversity in Science (OCDS). In addition, Steven was a co-founder and currently serves as president of the nation-wide Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering (ADSE) and he was the student recipient of the UCLA Academic Senate’s 2013-2014 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award. Steven is currently serving as an associate in the Communications Subcommittee for the ACS Committee on Minority Affairs (CMA) of the Board of Directors and Council. He is also the recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) 2015 Postdoctoral Research Award in Solar Energy Technologies Program. Other Stoddart Prize winners include Dr. Alexander Patananan, UCLA Pathology and Dr. Jessica Wang, Stanford (2015); Dr. Jessica R. Kramer, UC Berkeley (2014); Dr. Sarah M. Bronner, Genentech (2013); and Dr. Gregory B. Kuzmanich, Honeywell UOP (2012). More photos from the event may be viewed on the online photo gallery.
