Illinois faculty member Liviu Mirica, William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor of Chemistry, has recently been selected through three distinguished university programs to focus on developing collaborations toward his research group's interests in developing metal-containing imaging agents for biological applications.
Last year, he was one of six tenured Illinois faculty members appointed by the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) as CAS Associates. The appointments grant one semester of teaching release time to pursue an individual scholarly or creative project. Combined with a one-semester sabbatical, Mirica is using his release time to focus on research and collaborations through participation in two additional prestigious programs.
Mirica was selected a Moore Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology. The program invites researchers of exceptional quality who are distinguished at both the national and international levels to visit Caltech for a designated time to focus on research. While at Caltech this past fall, Mirica interacted with faculty in the Divisions of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Biology and Biological Engineering regarding his group’s research interests.
And from January through April 2026, Mirica is serving as a Somorjai Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley. The Visiting Miller Professorship program is supported by The Adolph C. and Mary Sprague Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, a prestigious visiting professorship program established in 1957. The purpose of the Visiting Miller Professorship is to bring promising or eminent scientists to the UC Berkeley campus on a short-term basis for collaborative research interactions within the Institute's interdisciplinary community. In addition, the purpose of the more recently created Somorjai Award is to support the collaborative research of a visiting scientist within the broad field of chemical sciences for a one-month term; however, for Mirica the Samorjai visiting professorship extends for three months, in line with the regular Miller visiting professorship. Mirica was nominated for the Miller visiting professorship by Prof. Don Tilley, who is the faculty host for Mirica, and the nomination was seconded by Prof. John Hartwig. While at UC Berkeley, Mirica is interacting with various chemistry faculty to discuss and establish collaborations focused on the Mirica group’s research efforts to develop unique transition metal catalysts for new cross-coupling reactions and biomimetic oxidative transformations.
"It is a great honor to be nominated and selected for these two prestigious visiting professorship appointments, as it gives me the opportunity to interact with a large number of eminent scientists, both at Caltech and UC Berkeley," Mirica said. "As I was an undergraduate student at Caltech and then a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, it also gives me the chance to reconnect with my former instructors and research advisors, while meeting new faculty and researchers at both institutions. And enjoying some warmer weather during the winter months is also nice.”