2021 ACS Fellow

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Polymer chemist Professor Heather Maynard has been elected a 2021 Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The American Chemical Society works to promote public policies that advance the chemistry enterprise and its practitioners. The Fellow of the American Chemical Society designation is awarded to members who have made exceptional contributions to the science or profession and have provided excellent volunteer service to the society.  Maynard is one of 49 members named as 2021 ACS Fellows. Read the announcement here

Maynard holds UCLA’s Dr. Myung Ki Hong Endowed Chair in Polymer Science. She is a worldwide leader in the area of protein-polymer conjugates, which are important therapeutics for a variety of diseases. She develops new synthetic methods to make the materials, invents new polymers to improve properties such as stability, and demonstrates preclinical efficacy of her conjugates with an eye towards translation for human health. Maynard also works in the area of smart materials for precision medicine: materials that respond to disease states in the body. 

Maynard’s research and teaching have been recognized by numerous awards including the American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, Fulbright Specialist Award, Seaborg Award, Bioconjugate Chemistry Lectureship Award, Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching and the UCLA Student Development Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award. Maynard is both an American Chemical Society Polymer Chemistry and Polymer Materials: Science and Engineering Fellow. She is also a Leverhulme, Kavli Frontiers, and Royal Society of Chemistry Fellow, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was a member of the United States Defense Science Study Group from 2016-2017. In February 2021, Maynard was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

Maynard is Director of the National Institutes of Health funded Chemistry Biology Interface (CBI) Training Program and Associate Director for the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. She is also the co-Director of the new $23.7 million NSF funded BioPACIFIC Materials Innovation Platform at UCLA and UCSB. In February 2021, Maynard was named an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

To learn more about Maynard’s research, teaching, and outreach activities, visit her website.
UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry faculty to be previously elected ACS Fellows are Professors Neil Garg, Miguel García-Garibay, Kendall Houk, Richard Kaner, Charles Knobler, Arlene Russell, Joan Valentine, Paul Weiss, and Herbert Kaesz.

Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.