Mark Maroncelli, professor of chemistry at Penn State, has won a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany. Maroncelli received the award in recognition of his accomplishments in research and teaching. The award includes a monetary grant and support for research at a German university of Maroncelli's choice.
Maroncelli's research focuses on achieving a molecular-level understanding of static and dynamic aspects of the solvation process and how those aspects influence chemical reactions and other time-dependent processes that take place in a solution. Understanding of solution-phase dynamics has increased dramatically in the last decade as a result of advances in ultrafast laser technology and the use of more sophisticated computer simulations. Maroncelli takes advantage of both of these techniques in order to study a variety of problems in solution-phase dynamics.
According to Nikolaus Ernsting, a professor at the Institut Für Chemie in Berlin, Germany, who nominated Maroncelli for the award, "Mark Maroncelli has made influential contributions to our understanding of liquid-state chemistry by a characteristic blend of experiment and experimentally-motivated theory. The influence of his fundamental research should eventually be seen in technical chemistry, synthetic chemistry, and even cell biology."
Maroncelli plans to use his award to work with his collaborators at the Institut Für Chemie.
A member of the Penn State faculty since 1987, Maroncelli was named associate professor in 1993 and professor in 1997. Before he arrived at Penn State, he was a research associate at the University of Chicago from 1985 to 1987 and a research associate at Oregon State University from 1984 to 1985. He earned a doctoral degree in chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983 and a bachelor's degree in chemistry, with highest honors, at Williams College in 1979. He is a member of the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society. In 2008, he was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.