Assistant Professor Courtney Roberts recognized with awards from UMN and Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (5/21/2025) – Assistant Professor Courtney Roberts has been recently honored twice over for her steadfast commitment to excellence in teaching and mentorship. Roberts’ new awards include the George Taylor Career Development Award from the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering and the 2025 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
Roberts’ laboratory conducts cutting-edge research at the interface of inorganic and organometallic chemistry. This work aims to solve fundamental problems in organic chemistry related to energy and pharmaceuticals. The group explores aryne functionalization, early transition metal catalysis, and C-C, C-N, and C-X bond formation in order to improve the efficacy of pharmaceuticals and invent new drugs. Roberts credits the creativity and dedication of her graduate students and the collaborative nature of the lab as essential to driving these innovations forward.
This strong body of scholarship was foundational in earning Roberts the 2025 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, which recognizes outstanding scholars who excel in both research and teaching. The award will provide Roberts with an unrestricted research grant of $100,000. Just a few weeks before earning the award from the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Roberts was also awarded the George W. Taylor Career Development Award from the UMN College of Science and Engineering. This award recognizes exceptional contributions to teaching by a candidate for tenure.
“I am delighted to contribute to the teaching mission of the University of Minnesota! I care a lot about making sure that our undergraduates get an excellent education and I consider it a privilege to be able to share my love of organic chemistry with them.” – Prof. Roberts
Roberts joined the UMN faculty in 2019 after completion of her postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan. In just over five years on the Department of Chemistry faculty, Roberts’ research and mentorship have been recognized numerous times. Her previous awards include the Sloan Fellowship (2025), the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship (2024), the 3M Alumni Professorship (2024), the Thieme Chemistry Journal Award (2024), the NSF CAREER Award (2023), an Amgen Young Investigator Award (2023), the ACS DOC Young Investigator title (2023), and an NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (2022).