Mallouk Elected as American Academy Fellow
Thomas Mallouk, Penn State DuPont professor of materials chemistry and physics, is among those elected as Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for 2009. He is one of the 210 new Fellows and 19 Foreign Honorary Members in the sciences, the humanities and the arts, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector to be honored.
A solid-state chemist who perhaps is known best for applying inorganic materials to a broad range of problems in chemistry, Mallouk is one of the pioneers in research on the self-assembly of inorganic molecules. He and his students showed in 1988 that inorganic crystal lattices can be grown one layer at a time on surfaces by wet chemical techniques. Since then, they have used this approach to make surface structures for artificial photosynthesis, chemical sensing, and the separation of left-handed and right-handed forms of the same molecule. Currently, his group is developing new materials to address problems in photochemical energy conversion, nanoscale electronics, catalysis, chemical sensing, environmental remediation, and powered movement on the nanometer length scale.
In 2007, Mallouk received the Penn State Schreyer Honors College Teaching Award. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society in 2006, and also received a Penn State Priestley Undergraduate Teaching Award that year. In addition, his work has been recognized with an Alpha Chi Sigma Outstanding Professor Award in 2003, a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1989, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1988, a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1987, and an Exxon/American Chemical Society Solid-State Chemistry Award in 1986. He holds five patents and has submitted five additional patent applications.
Mallouk is the author or co-author of more than 280 research publications and has edited four books on solid-state synthesis, interfacial chemistry, and chemical sensors. He has been associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society since 1996, and has served on editorial boards for the Journal of Solid State Chemistry, Advanced Functional Materials, Chemistry and Materials, the Canadian Journal of Chemistry, the Accounts of Chemical Research, and NanoLetters. He has been Chief Scientist for NuVant Systems Inc. since 2000. He also co-founded Princeton Nanotech LLC in 2004 and serves on the board of directors of Lehigh Nanotech LLC.
Mallouk earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Brown University in 1977 and a doctoral degree in chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. Mallouk was a member of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin as assistant professor from 1985 to 1989, associate professor from 1989 to 1991, and professor from 1991 to 1993. In 1993 he joined the faculty at Penn State, and in 1998 he was named the DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry, an honor with which he received a medal from the Penn State Eberly College of Science. He also was named a professor of physics in 2004.
The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, established in 1780 by founders of the nation, undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Current projects focus on science, technology, and global security; social policy and American institutions; the humanities and culture; and education. The Academy's membership of scholars and practitioners from many disciplines and professions gives it a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary, long-term policy research.
Since its founding by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the Academy has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
"Since 1780, the Academy has served the public good by convening leading thinkers and doers from diverse perspectives to provide practical policy solutions to the pressing issues of the day," said Leslie Berlowitz, chief executive officer and William T. Golden chair. "I look forward to welcoming into the Academy these new members to help continue that tradition."
"These remarkable men and women have made singular contributions to their fields, and to the world," said Academy President Emilio Bizzi. "By electing them as members, the Academy honors them and their work, and they, in turn, honor us."
A complete list of newly elected Fellows and Honorary Foreign Members with their affiliations is on the Web at: http://www.amacad.org/enewsletter/a.pdf.