Professor Anastassia Alexandrova recently delivered the 2025 Trustees’ Council of Penn Women Lecture in Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.
Known for her groundbreaking work in theory and computation, Alexandrova is the Charles W. Clifford Jr. Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA. This prestigious public lecture has been presented by several prominent female scientists including Professors Cynthia Friend, Geraldine Richmond, Naomi Halas, Joanne Stubbe, and Jacqueline Barton.
The Trustees’ Council of Penn Women (TCPW) is a distinguished alumnae group focused on addressing women’s issues at the University of Pennsylvania. Through its programs, including the Fund to Encourage Women (FEW) Grant, TCPW has contributed over $500,000 to support organizations and individuals. The FEW Grant brings internationally renowned female scholars to campus to lecture and engage with faculty and students, serving as role models for female students during their visits. The Trustees’ Council of Penn Women Lecture Series, sponsored by the FEW Grant and the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences, is a key part of this ongoing initiative.
Alexandrova’s work spans multiple fields, including heterogeneous catalysis, where she introduced a dynamic statistical ensemble model for catalytic interfaces, and enzymology, focusing on the role of protein scaffolds and dynamic electric fields in catalysis. Since 2022, she has directed the NSF Center for Chemical Innovation, focusing on molecular qubits for quantum information science. Her leadership extends to serving as Senior Editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, reviewing editor for Science, and chairing the Theory subdivision of the ACS PHYS Division. She has also held significant service roles within UCLA, including Vice Chair for Undergraduate Education (2019-2022) and Liaison for the Physical Chemistry Division (2024-present).
Alexandrova has received several prestigious awards in recent years, including the 2024 Quantum Bio-Inorganic Chemistry Prize and the 2020, 2022, and 2024 DOE Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) Awards. In 2023, she was honored with the UCLA Gold Shield Faculty Prize for academic excellence and the Brown Investigator Award by the Brown Science Foundation. Additionally, in 2022, she received the Chemical Science Reviewer Highlight Award and the Utah State University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alumni Achievement Award. She was awarded the Max Planck-Humboldt Medal in 2021, a joint honor from the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. In 2020, she also received the ACS PHYS Early Career Award. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2024.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
