Undergraduate researcher senior Matthew Ye (Paul Weiss group) has been selected to receive the ACS Division of Physical Chemistry 2019 Undergraduate Award.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Physical Chemistry sponsors the award to recognize outstanding achievement by undergraduate students in physical chemistry, and to encourage further pursuits in the field.
“It is curious, driven undergraduates like Matthew who make teaching general chemistry so exciting,” said his advisor Professor Paul Weiss. “He is always eager to learn about and to join unfamiliar projects to see where he might contribute. He contributes to multiple ongoing projects in our group and is voracious in taking on new concepts. Matthew already coauthored one key paper on his research, published in ACS Nano, with more to come.”
As part of the award, Ye will receive a free one-year membership in the ACS Division of Physical Chemistry, as well as recognition on the ACS Physical Chemistry Division’s website and an official certificate from ACS. He will also be recognized at the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry’s commencement ceremony in June 2019.
Ye is a 4th year undergraduate student with a triple major in biophysics, physical chemistry, and applied mathematics. Since March 2016, Ye has been working as an undergraduate researcher in Professor Paul Weiss’s nanoscience research lab to visualize the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect in DNA using fluorescence microscopy. Ye was also a research intern at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he worked in a pediatric cardiology research lab studying neutrophil function and the maladaptive response of endothelial cells to amphetamine under hypoxic conditions.
Matthew’s work in the Weiss group has earned him a number of awards, such as the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program, Seaborg Symposium Poster Prize, and Raymond and Dorothy Wilson Research Fellowship. He was formerly a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Undergraduate Science Journal, a peer-reviewed journal that showcases the diverse scholarly output of STEM students at UCLA.
Matthew plans to pursue a career in nanoscience in order to study the behavior and manipulation of matter at the smallest scales.
“I am tremendously grateful to my mentors, John Abendroth and Dominik Stemer, for their inspiration and support” Ye said.
Penny Jennings, Communications Manager, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
