Academics

Thomas Mallouk selected as Fellow of the American Chemical Society

Thomas Mallouk, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Physics, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State, has been selected as a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Fellows are nominated by their peers and selected for their outstanding achievements in and contributions to the sciences and the profession, and for providing excellent volunteer service to the ACS community.

Mallouk is one of the pioneers in research on the self-assembly of inorganic molecules. He is a solid-state chemist who is highly regarded for his research in applying inorganic materials to a broad range of problems in chemistry. He and his students showed in 1988 that inorganic crystal lattices can be grown one layer at a time on surfaces by wet chemical techniques. Since then, his lab has used this approach to make surface structures for artificial photosynthesis, chemical sensing, and the separation of left-handed and right-handed forms of the same molecule, which is a critical step in many applications. Currently, his group is developing new materials to address problems in photochemical energy conversion, energy storage, nanoscale electronics, catalysis, environmental remediation, and powered movement on the nanometer length scale.

His work has been recognized with an an Exxon/American Chemical Society Solid-State Chemistry Award in 1986, a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1987, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1988, a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1989, and an Alpha Chi Sigma Outstanding Professor Award in 2003. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society, in 2006, and is currently chair-elect of the Section on Chemistry of AAAS. He also received a Penn State Priestley Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2006, followed by the Penn State Schreyer Honors College Teaching Award in 2007. Mallouk won the American Chemical Society National Award in the Chemistry of Materials in 2008 and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. He was named an Evan Pugh professor at Penn State in 2010.

Mallouk is the author or co-author of over 350 research publications and has edited four books on solid-state synthesis, interfacial chemistry, and chemical sensors. He has been associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society since 1996, and has served on editorial boards for the Journal of Solid State Chemistry, Advanced Functional Materials, Chemistry and Materials, the Canadian Journal of Chemistry, the Accounts of Chemical Research, and Nano Letters. Mallouk was the director of the Center for Nanoscale Science, a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center supported by the National Science Foundation, from 2005-2010, and he currently is the associate director of the Center. He also has been director of the Center for Solar Nanomaterials at Penn State since 2010.

Mallouk holds a number of patents for innovations that resulted from his research. He has been chief scientist for NuVant Systems Inc., an electrochemical technology company, since 2000. Together with then-graduate student Cary Supalo, Mallouk headed the Independent Laboratory Access for the Blind (ILAB) project at Penn State from 2004-10, developing laboratory techniques and technology for students who are blind or have low vision. Their work resulted in the establishment of Independence Science, LLC, a company that provides materials, resources, and advice to students and helps institutions meet the compliance goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Mallouk earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Brown University in 1977 and a doctoral degree in chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983. He was a member of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin as assistant professor from 1985 to 1989, associate professor from 1989 to 1991, and professor from 1991 to 1993. He joined the faculty at Penn State in 1993, and in 1998 he was named the DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry. He also was named a professor of physics in 2005, and a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in 2012.

Thomas Mallouk Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated August 20, 2013