Professor Jonathan Sweedler has been named to win this year’s Malcom E. Pruitt Award. This award is bestowed by the Council for Chemical Research in recognition for outstanding individual contributions to the progress of chemistry and chemical engineering by promotion of mutually beneficial interactions among universities, the chemical industry and government. The Award is bestowed in a special ceremony at CCR’s annual meeting, which this year will be in Alexandria, Virginia later this month. Jonathan is the first Illinois faculty member to win the award, although three SCS alumni have previously been recipients: Jennifer Holmgren (Ph.D. with John Shapley), Randy Guschl, (Ph.D. with Ted Brown), and Bill Banholzer (Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering).
Professor Sweedler, the James R. Eiszner Family Chair in Chemistry and the Director of the School of Chemical Sciences, received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of California at Davis in 1983 and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1989. Thereafter, he was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Richard Zare and Dr. Richard Scheller at Stanford University, and joined the faculty at Illinois in 1991. He is associated with the Beckman Institute, Biotechnology Center, Neuroscience Program and Bioengineering Program. His research interests are in bioanalytical chemistry, and focus on developing new methods for assaying nanoliter volume samples, and applying these methods to study the distribution and dynamic release of neurotransmittors and neuropeptides from individual neurons. Specifically, he is investigating the roles that peptide hormones, neurotransmitters and neuromodulatory agents play in behavior, learning and memory. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Beckman Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study at UIUC. He has previously been named a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, a University of Illinois Scholar, a Packard Fellow, a Searle Scholar, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, and an NSF Young Investigator. Among his many other awards are the Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award, the Theophilus Redwood Lecturship from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the ACS Analytical Division Award in Chemical Instrumentation, the Heinrich-Emanuel Merck Prize, the Gill Prize in Instrumentation and Measurement Science, the Benedetti-Pichler Award in Microanalysis, the ACS Arthur Findeis Award for Young Analytical Scientists, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award.