Professor Ohyun Kwon is one of ten organic chemists to be selected by the American Chemical Society (ACS) for the prestigious 2024 Arthur C Cope Scholar Award for her contributions to the field of organic chemistry.
Kwon will receive the award, which includes $5,000, a certificate, and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant, at the Fall ACS National Meeting, where she will deliver an awards address at the Arthur C. Cope Symposium.
A member of UCLA’s faculty since 2001, Kwon’s research centers on developing new reactions, reagents, and synthesizing complex natural products and potential pharmaceutical agents. She has developed 22 patented drug candidates and 13 commercialized chemicals. Her awards include the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry’s prestigious 2019-2020 McCoy Award, which recognizes the most significant contribution of the year, within the department, to the fields of chemistry and biochemistry. In 2019, Kwon received the 2019 Novartis Chemistry Lectureship Award, and in 2018, she received the 2018 Boehringer Ingelheim Green Chemistry Award, and a $200,000 Technology Development Award from the University of California Center for Accelerated Innovation.
The Cope Scholar Awards recognizes and encourages excellence in organic chemistry. It was 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.
Other UCLA chemistry and biochemistry faculty who have received the Arthur C. Cope Scholar award are Kendall N. Houk (1988), Fred Wudl (1993), Christopher S. Foote (1994), Michael E. Jung (1995), J. Fraser Stoddart (1999), Yi Tang (2012), Miguel García-Garibay and Neil Garg (2015), Heather Maynard (2018), Hosea Nelson (2020).
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.