Professor Richard Kaner has been named a fellow of the American Institute of Chemists, in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the chemical profession.
At the AIC Chemical Pioneer Symposium held in May 2019, Kaner gave a special lecture and was presented with institute’s 2019 Chemical Pioneer Award, which recognizes chemists and chemical engineers who have made outstanding contributions advancing the science of chemistry or impacting the chemical industry or the chemical profession.
Kaner was commended for his “seminal contributions to the field of conducting polymers by demonstrating the first truly water-processable conducting polymer.” AIC President David Manuta noted that Kaner’s groundbreaking synthetic methods for producing nanofibers of polyaniline have generated enormous interest in this field.
Since its inception in 1966, the AIC Chemical Pioneer Award has been given to three other researchers with connections to the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry; alumnus Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg (B.S. ’34) in 1968, alumnus Nobel Laureate Bruce Merrifield (B.S. ’43, Ph.D. ’49) in 1993, and UCLA Professor Emeritus Frederick Hawthorne in 1994.
A UCLA distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and of materials science and engineering, Kaner holds the Dr. Myung Ki Hong Endowed Chair in Materials Innovation. He is co-founder of Nanotech Energy, a company that is working to move the Kaner group’s cutting-edge research on graphene-based energy storage devices from the laboratory to the marketplace.
To learn more about Kaner’s research, visit his group’s website.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
