UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Raymond Schaak, DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry at Penn State, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed by peers upon members of the AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science. Schaak was selected for “distinguished contributions to the field of materials synthesis, particularly for the development of new methods to synthesize nanocrystalline solids with targeted structures and properties.”
Throughout his career, Schaak has combined ideas and tools from solid-state chemistry, molecular chemistry, and nanoscience, with the goal of developing new chemical methods to make complex nanoscale solids that could impact such areas as energy, catalysis, optics, and medicine. A key focus of Schaak's research program is studying how nanoscale solids form, then using this knowledge to design new materials with important and unusual features. For example, his insights into nanoparticle chemistry have recently led to the discovery of a new class of materials that can catalyze the production of hydrogen from water.
Schaak received the Inorganic Nanoscience Award from the American Chemical Society's Division of Inorganic Chemistry in 2016 and was named DuPont Professor in Materials Chemistry at Penn State in recognition of his distinguished contributions in research and education in 2013. Schaak’s other recognitions include the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the Physical Sciences in 2012; the National Fresenius Award sponsored jointly by Phi Lambda Upsilon, the National Chemistry Honor Society, and the American Chemical Society in 2011; the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and the Sloan Research Fellowship in 2007; and the DuPont Young Professor Grant, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the National Science Foundation Career Award in 2006.
Schaak has authored more than 150 scientific papers published in international, peer-reviewed journals. He serves as an associate editor for ACS Nano, as an editorial advisory board member for the Journal of Solid State Chemistry, and as a Science Advisory Committee member for the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.
Before joining Penn State as a faculty member in 2007, Schaak was an assistant professor of chemistry at Texas A&M University from 2003 to 2007. He was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton University from 2001 to 2003. Schaak earned a doctoral degree in chemistry in 2001 at Penn State and a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Lebanon Valley College in 1998.