The College of Arts & Sciences at Utah State University has selected Professor Anastassia Alexandrova for a 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of her “extraordinary academic and scientific accomplishments and her lasting contributions to the field of chemistry.”
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.
The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes graduates of the College of Arts & Sciences who have achieved exceptional success in their professional careers, demonstrated outstanding service to their communities, and have shown a lasting commitment to Utah State University and its land-grant mission. This award honors alumni whose journeys exemplify how a foundation in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences fosters thoughtful leadership, forward-thinking innovation, and advocacy for meaningful progress.
Alexandrova will be celebrated by the College at its Networking Night on Thursday, March 26, 2026, at the Logan campus. She will be recognized with seven fellow Distinguished Alumni, two Outstanding Public Service Awardees, and one Inspiration Award recipient.
The College of Arts & Sciences is a new college at Utah State with the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Sciences merging as of July 1, 2025. Alexandrova will be part of the inaugural Distinguished Alumni group for the new, larger college.
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, penjen@chem.ucla.edu.
