Congratulations to Professor Alexander Spokoyny on his promotion to full professor with tenure, effective July 1, 2024.
Spokoyny is a prominent chemist specializing in inorganic, main group and organometallic chemistry, with a particular focus on the applications of these fields in energy storage and biomedical technologies. He currently serves as the Chair of the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, a position he has held since 2023.
Spokoyny completed his undergraduate studies at UCLA, earning a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 2006, where he was an undergraduate researcher in Professor M. Frederick Hawthorne’s group. He then pursued a Ph.D. at Northwestern University, where he worked under the guidance of Professor Chad Mirkin. His postdoctoral research was conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked on bioconjugation chemistry with Professors Steve Buchwald and Brad Pentelute.
Since joining the UCLA faculty in 2014, Spokoyny has built a world-class research program that has made significant contributions to the field of synthetic inorganic and organometallic chemistry. His research group focuses on creating novel materials and molecules that address critical issues in energy and medicine, including the development of new methods for selective labeling, recognition, and bio-imaging.
Over his career, Spokoyny’s work has earned him numerous accolades. He has received the American Chemical Society Inorganic Young Investigator Award, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Prize for Young Chemists, the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, and the Maximizing Investigators Research Award from the NIH. He was also named a Cottrell Scholar and received the NSF CAREER Award, among other honors. In 2024, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, recognizing his outstanding contributions to the chemical sciences.
Beyond his research, Spokoyny is deeply committed to education and outreach. He has received several awards for his teaching and community service, including the Hanson-Dow Award for Teaching Excellence, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the UCLA Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award. His outreach efforts include teaching chemistry to incarcerated students as part of the UCLA Prison Education Program.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
