Several professors in the College of LAS, including chemistry professors Jefferson Chan and Joaquín Rodríguez-López, have recently received named scholar positions for their contributions in education and research at the University of Illinois.
Jefferson Chan has been named one of the Helen Corley Petit Scholars (for early career scholars), and Joaquín Rodríguez-López has been named The J. Andrew and Susan S. Langan Professorial Scholar (for exceptional mid-career faculty members in any area of the college).
The named positions recently announced by the College of LAS include the Helen Corley Petit Scholars, the I.C. Gunsalus Scholar, the J. Andrew and Susan S. Langan Professorial Scholar, LAS Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholars, the Leslie Watt Scholar, and the Lynn M. Martin Professorial Scholar. They will receive financial support for their work.
Professor Chan received his BSc degree in chemistry from the University of British Columbia in 2006 and his PhD from Simon Fraser University in 2011. For his graduate research, he received the Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Doctoral Research Award for the top Canadian thesis in the areas of organic and bioorganic chemistry. From 2011-2014 he was a Human Frontiers Science Program Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Prof. Chan joined the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2014.
His research group is developing bioorthoganol chemical probes for the early diagnosis of cancer, applying these chemical tools to study tumor progression and metastasis in vivo; developing new small-molecule inhibitors that target crucial TB-specific enzymatic activities to study and treat TB infections; and developing chemical and protein-based probes to discover the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's disease.
Professor Rodríguez-López did his undergraduate studies at Tecnológico de Monterrey, where he performed research in electrochemistry and went on to earn his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin (2010) under the guidance of Prof. Allen J. Bard. He completed postdoctoral studies at Cornell University (2012) before joining the faculty at UIUC.
His research group combines interests in electroanalytical chemistry and energy materials by developing chemically-sensitive methods for studying ionic and electronic reactivity in nano-structures, highly-localized surface features, and ultra-thin electrodes. Joaquin’s group aspires to build a dynamic and diverse environment for research that generates original concepts for high-performance energy technologies.