Of Note

Chemist Donna Blackmond earns catalysis award

Professor Donna Blackmond, PhD, of the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute, has been awarded the inaugural Irving Wender Award for Excellence in Catalysis from the Pittsburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society (PCCS). The award recognizes Blackmond’s research into how complex organic molecules—which can include drug compounds—can be synthesized through catalytic routes.

“PCCS could not have wished for a more perfect inaugural Wender awardee,” says the society in a recent statement. “Dr. Blackmond is world-renowned for her research focusing on mechanistic aspects of the synthesis of complex organic molecules by catalytic routes, particularly asymmetric catalysis with application in pharmaceutical processes.”

Blackmond, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, says she is especially honored to receive the Wender award because of her past collaborations with chemist Irving Wender at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Irving was one of my earliest and most important mentors and a lifelong close friend. He served on my thesis committee, and we worked together after that. He was an exceptional chemist, synthesizing one of the very first organometallic complexes in the 1950’s. He died in 2016 at the ripe old age of 101, and I spoke at his funeral,” says Blackmond.

Blackmond will receive the award on June 8 at the meeting of the Pittsburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society, where she will also give the inaugural Wender award lecture.

Send comments to: press[at]scripps.edu

Donna Blackmond

Donna Blackmond, PhD, professor at Scripps Research

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Of Note

Chemist Donna Blackmond earns catalysis award