Prof. Catherine Murphy to Join Faculty at Illinois in August 2009

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois is delighted to announce that Professor Catherine J. Murphy will be joining our faculty next fall.  

Cathy graduated magna cum laude (Bronze Tablet) from UIUC in 1986 with a double degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry.  After obtaining a Ph.D. with Art Ellis at Wisconsin, she held sequential NSF and NIH postdoctoral fellowships with Jacqueline Barton at Cal Tech.

In 1993 Cathy joined the chemistry faculty at the University of South Carolina where she is currently the Guy F. Lipscomb Professor of Chemistry. She is an internationally recognized leader in inorganic and materials chemistry, her research focusing on the synthesis, characterization, study, and applications of metallic nanoparticles and nanomaterials (nanorods, nanowires, etc.).  She also interested in DNA dynamics, chemical sensing and catalysis.  Cathy has published over 135 papers and her work has had broad impact.  As one measure, this past year her papers have received nearly 1800 citations.

Cathy is also an outstanding teacher and mentor having received the USC Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, the Siemens-Westinghouse High School Science Mentor Award, the Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Golden Key Faculty Award for Creative Integration of Research and Undergraduate Teaching.  She is also a coauthor of the 11th edition of Ted Brown and H. E. LeMay’s textbook Chemistry: The Central Science.

Cathy has received numerous other awards for both research and teaching including an NSF CAREER Award, a Cottrell Scholar Award, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and a Sloan Research Fellowship.  This year Cathy became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and joined the selection committee for the NSF Alan T. Waterman award.  She is a senior editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry and is on the Editorial Advisory Boards of 10 professional journals, including Chemistry of Materials, Chemical Communications, Langmuir, and Nano Letters.