Professor Prashant K. Jain, a Professor of Chemistry and Alumni Research Scholar, has been appointed a Center for Advanced Study Associate for the 2022-23 academic year.
One of the primary missions of the Center is to identify and support the most productive and innovative faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From hard science and engineering to humanities and the arts, CAS works with every department on campus to provide high-achieving faculty the support, connections, and funding to pursue their work. CAS Associates are tenured Illinois faculty members whose project proposals are selected in an annual competition. They are granted one semester of teaching release time in order to pursue an individual scholarly or creative project.
Jain was appointed a CAS Associate in the Spring 2022 semester upon the recommendation of CAS Professors and with concurrence of campus and university administrations and the Board of Trustees. He is also a Beckman Institute professor, Materials Research Lab professor, and an affiliate professor in physics and at IQUIST. His research focuses on the understanding and control of light-matter interactions on the nanoscale and the use of confined light for artificial photosynthesis and imaging atomistic dynamics of complex solids and catalysts.
Professor Jain received his B.Tech. from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai and his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Georgia Tech. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, following which he joined the Illinois faculty.
CAS Professors are permanent members of the Center for Advanced Study, are selected from UIUC faculty on the basis of their outstanding scholarship, and serve on the Research Appointments Committee, charged with selecting CAS Associates and Fellows.
Chemistry faculty members who are CAS Professors include Martin Gruebele, Jeffrey Moore, Catherine Murphy, and Jonathan Sweedler.