James S. Nowick was born in 1964 and received his AB degree from Columbia University in 1985. He was both an NSF Graduate Fellow and an ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Graduate Fellow during his graduate studies at MIT, where he earned his PhD degree in 1990 under the supervision of Rick L. Danheiser. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Julius Rebek at MIT, he began his independent career as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in 1991. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996 and Professor in 1998.
Professor Nowick's research interests include peptidomimetic chemistry, molecular recognition, and bioorganic catalysis. He is committed to chemical education and runs the UCI Chemistry Outreach Program, which reaches over 2000 high school students each year. Professor Nowick received a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award (1991), an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award (1992), an NSF Young Investigator Award (1992), an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Award (1994), a Presidential Faculty Fellow Award (1995), a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (1996), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (1997), and an American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1998). For his contributions to undergraduate education at UCI, he has received the UCI Award for Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Undergraduate Research (1995), the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research (1997) and the UCI School of Physical Sciences Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education (1999).