Catherine Murphy was one of three Cottrell Scholars named as a recipient of the RCSA's new TREE Award (Transformational Research and Excellence in Education) intended to recognize and advance truly outstanding research and education.
The recipients were selected by a committee of senior Cottrell Scholars and members of the RCSA scientific staff, with final selection approved by RCSA President Robert Shelton and the foundation’s Board of Directors.
-- In the mid-1990s Murphy was among the first inorganic chemists to start a program in the synthesis, functionalization, and utilization of inorganic nanomaterials. Her early work on unpassivated II-VI semiconductor "quantum dots" as chemical sensors was well ahead of its time. This work is still highly cited and influential today. According to Google Scholar, Murphy’s work has been cited nearly 30,000 times overall, with an overall h index of 76; since 2009, her citations are almost 18,500, with an h-index of 63. Her groundbreaking paper on anisotropic metal nanoparticles (J. Phys. Chem. B, 2005) has been cited almost 1,800 times. Thompson Reuters identifies her as 10th among the 100 most frequently cited material scientists in the world for the first decade of the 21st century. In addition she is a champion of undergraduate research and a long-time contributing author to the most widely used introductory general chemistry textbook, Chemistry: The Central Science. Murphy is also one of the few tenured faculty members who regularly teaches Illinois' first-year general chemistry course.
Partially excerpted from RCSA announcement