Professor Renee Frontiera named inaugural W. Ronald Gentry Chair of Physical Chemistry
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (02/06/2026) – Department of Chemistry Professor Renee Frontiera has been named the inaugural W. Ronald Gentry Chair of Physical Chemistry. The honorary position is made possible through generous endowed gifts from Professor Emeritus W. Ronald Gentry, who served on the Chemistry faculty from 1970 - 2005.
Since her arrival to the University of Minnesota in 2013, Frontiera has built a research program focused on developing and applying Raman spectroscopic techniques to determine how nanoscale local environments impact chemical reaction dynamics. The group’s research is highly interdisciplinary, investigating current problems at the interface of chemistry, biology, and materials science. Recent research from Frontiera – published throughout last year in the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry, Nano Letters, and the Journal of the American Society – uses new Raman spectroscopic techniques to control and probe nanoscale chemical reactions. Her group is known for the development and application of new spectroscopic techniques designed to initiate, control, and probe chemical transformations. Her research has led to fundamental understanding and scientific advances in the areas of plasmon-driven chemistry, super-resolution microscopy, spectroscopy-guided molecular design, and plasma-driven solution electrochemistry.
Research by the Frontiera group has produced more than 75 peer-reviewed publications in internationally recognized journals, including Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When she’s not in the lab, Frontiera currently serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for Chemical Physics, through which she helps shape the future of the Chemical Physics PhD program. She also performs as a presenter in the annual Energy & U outreach show, an explosive chemistry performance that brings more than 5,000 metro-area elementary school students to campus each year.
Frontiera has been previously recognized for her contributions and service to the profession and the University with a number of awards. These include the Sara Evans Leadership Award (2024), Time-Resolved Vibrational Spectroscopy Young Investigator Award (2023), being named a Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists, Finalist (2022), the American Physical Society Future of Chemical Physics Lectureship Award (2021), the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2019), the Guillermo E. Borja Career Development Award (2019), the Journal of Physical Chemistry C Lectureship (2018), the James L. Kinsey Memorial Lectureship, Rice University (2018), the DOE Early Career Award (2017), the Chemical & Engineering News Talented 12 (2017), the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (2017), the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship (2017 - 2019), the NIH Maximizing Investigators Research Award (2016), and the NSF CAREER Award (2016).
The newly created W. Ronald Gentry Chair of Physical Chemistry was established to recruit, support, and retain a world-recognized leader in some area of physical chemistry research who has excellent prospects for continued productivity in physical chemistry. Frontiera was nominated for the award by Chemistry faculty in recognition of her significant contributions to the field of physical chemistry and the chemistry community at large. In nominating Frontiera for the award, Prof. David Blank wrote:
"Renee is a world-recognized leader in the area of time- and spatially resolved ultrafast spectroscopy as applied to a wide range of very important scientific questions. It is clear from my personal conversations with colleagues across the country and around the world that Renee is at the top of every list when it comes to inviting the leader in her discipline. There is no doubt that Renee has demonstrated excellent prospects for continued productivity in her field of research; whenever I talk with Renee about research, she is always looking to the future, thinking about where the field will move next, and often being the one to set a new path for our discipline."
Professor Emeritus W. Ronald Gentry was an active Chemistry faculty member from 1970 - 2005, and served as Department Head from 1989 to 1999. As a leading molecular beam experimentalist, he has been widely recognized for his invention of powerful and complex instrumentation to develop a variety of new types of experiments. Gentry’s novel designs included merged beam and pulsed beam techniques that revolutionized molecular beam research, and his pioneering studies of quantum-state resolved energy transfer and chemical reaction dynamics in single molecular collisions made a profound impact on the field. Furthermore, Gentry’s discovery and characterization of the extremely weakly-bound dihelium molecule, with an internuclear distance of over 50 Å, remains a landmark achievement in chemical physics. Over the course of his career, Gentry’s research produced 95 publications and numerous scientific collaborations.
Prof. Gentry writes “I am delighted with Renee’s selection for this honor and hope it will help her achieve even more great things in the future.”