Professors named 2019 ACS Fellows
Professor Philippe Buhlmann and Professor Marc Hillmyer were named 2019 American Chemical Society Fellows.
Professor Buhlmann
Professor Philippe Buhlmann has been named a 2019 American Chemical Society Fellow. Fellows are honored for the outstanding contributions and service to chemistry, science, the profession, and the American Chemical Society (ACS). This year's 70 Fellows, which include Professor Marc Hillmyer, will be honored at the fall National ACS meeting in San Diego.
Buhlmann has been outreach chair of the Minnesota Section of the American Chemical Society (MN ACS) section since 2004. He co-founded its Chemists-in-the-Library outreach series, and continues to organize it to this day, connecting scientist volunteers with young people in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul-area communities. He has also served a number of times on MN ACS nominating committees, and has annually hosted high school students from the chapter's SEED program in his research lab. In 2018, he received the Janet Tarino Volunteer Award from the MN ACS, honored for his commitment to outreach and service.
Professor Buhlmann is the Department of Chemistry’s director of Graduate Studies, a position he has held since 2012. As director of Graduate Studies, he has led many initiatives, including the elimination of specialty areas, increasing students' freedom to select courses, improving progress feedback to graduate students, and aggressively using fellowships for recruiting.
He is passionate about addressing issues of stress and mental health for graduate students. He works closely with the University of Minnesota's Boynton Health on those issues, including making students, faculty, and staff aware of resources, teaching them to recognize signs of stress and despair, and equipping them with knowledge and resources to help. His initiatives led to the founding of the Community of Chemistry Graduate students, a student-led organization that organizes events to improve the lifestyles of graduate students and help in their career development. He is also one of the Department of Chemistry's mental health advocates, and leads workshops on mental health awareness.
A dedicated teacher, in 2015, Buhlmann received an Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education from the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, making him a Distinguished University Teaching Professor. He was honored for excellence in instruction, involvement in students' research, scholarship and professional development, development of instructional programs, and advising and mentoring of students.
As a researcher, he is an expert in electrochemistry, with special interests in fluorous materials and host guest chemistry.
Buhlmann earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in chemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Before joining the Department of Chemistry in September 2000, he was a post-doctoral fellow and then staff member at the University of Tokyo. In 2009, he was a visiting professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Professor Hillmyer
Professor Marc Hillmyer has been named a 2019 American Chemical Society Fellow. Fellows are honored for their outstanding contributions and service to chemistry, science, the profession, and the American Chemical Society (ACS). This year's 70 Fellows, which include Professor Philippe Buhlmann, will be honored at the fall National ACS meeting in San Diego.
Hillmyer received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Florida in 1989 and his doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1994. After completing his post-doctoral research at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, he joined the chemistry faculty at Minnesota in 1997.
He is currently a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Chemistry and leads a research group focused on the synthesis and self-assembly of multifunctional polymers. In addition to his teaching and research responsibilities, Hillmyer served as an associate editor for the ACS journal Macromolecules from 2008-2017 and is currently the editor-in-chief of Macromolecules. He is also the director of the Center for Sustainable Polymers headquartered at the University of Minnesota, a National Science Foundation Center for Chemical Innovation.
In addition to Buhlmann and Hillmyer, other current faculty who are ACS Fellows include Christopher Cramer, Mark Distefano, Timothy Lodge, Lee Penn, Lawrence Que Jr., and Donald Truhlar.
Chemical & Engineering News published the list of ACS Fellows in its July 15 issue.