FSU chemistry professor wins prestigious American Chemical Society award
A 糖心vlog faculty member has become the first in the university鈥檚 history to receive the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, one of the most prestigious awards in organic chemistry.
Igor Alabugin, a professor at in the College of Arts and Sciences, was selected for the 2021 edition of the international award for excellence in organic chemistry. Alabugin has been with FSU since 2000 and specializes in organic synthesis and catalysis, computational chemistry, nanoscience and photochemistry.
鈥淲hat makes this award special is that it is the first one in the history of FSU, somewhere I have been for the duration of my independent career,鈥 Alabugin said. 鈥淭his is also a recognition of a very strong organic chemistry tradition at FSU.鈥
Alabugin鈥檚 list of accolades is extensive: He has won a Fulbright Scholar Award, been named a Fellow of the and was the first FSU faculty member to be awarded all three FSU Undergraduate Awards 鈥 Teaching, Advising and Research Mentor. He has published a book and more than 170 papers, has presented at approximately 300 invited lectures at universities, industries and conferences, and he currently holds 16 patents.
The Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards were established in 1984 by the ACS Board of Directors under the terms of the will of Cope, an accomplished organic chemist and member of the . Only 10 scholars are selected by the ACS worldwide each year to receive the award, which consists of a $5,000 prize and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant. Recipients also deliver an address at the Arthur C. Cope Symposium.
Alabugin first learned of the award鈥檚 existence as a student at Russia鈥檚 Moscow State University in the early 1990s.
鈥淚 remember looking at the list of awardees with awe, as it included many of my scientific heroes,鈥 he said. 鈥淭he list of former honorees includes five Nobel Laureates, the most recent of whom, Ben L. Feringa, received the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award just one year before receiving a Nobel Prize. It was hard to even imagine then that I would earn one of these coveted awards a couple decades later.鈥
Geoffrey Strouse, chair for the FSU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said the international awards underscore the high-caliber faculty and graduates of the department and uphold the university鈥檚 stellar reputation on a world stage.
鈥淔or my group, chemistry is the true frontier of scientific discovery,鈥 Alabugin said. 鈥淭he chemical universe is immense and mostly still undiscovered, and new technologies depend on organic chemists who can design and discover molecules with the right properties, often inventing chemical reactions that never existed before. Our group鈥檚 research is the combination of fundamental insights 鈥 often computational and theoretical in nature 鈥 with practical organic chemistry, including the development of new reactions and building new molecules.鈥
In addition to Alabugin鈥檚 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, the ACS also selected FSU alumnus Kerry Gilmore and two of Gilmore鈥檚 former colleagues from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, to receive the ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry. The award recognizes outstanding scientific discoveries that lay the foundation for environmentally friendly products or manufacturing processes at a cost comparable to current technologies. Gilmore, who recently accepted an assistant professorship with the University of Connecticut, is one of Alabugin鈥檚 former Ph.D. students.
鈥淚 am very lucky to have mentored students who will make a difference in the world,鈥 Alabugin said. 鈥淜erry is one such student. His doctoral work led to a fundamental discovery that literally rewrote the textbooks. Seeing Kerry become the leader in a field of green chemistry makes me proud and optimistic for the future of the chemical profession.鈥
Gilmore praised Alabugin as a fantastic mentor who provided him with a strong intellectual foundation for his career and transformed the way he thinks about and approaches scientific endeavors.
鈥淭o have been honored alongside Igor, it simply shows the impact he has had and continues to have on science,鈥 Gimore said. 鈥淗e advances chemistry both through his own work as well through those he has trained. Florida State was an excellent choice for graduate school, providing me with the resources, training and environment I needed to be successful. I feel very lucky to be a former ChemiNole, and the quality of the program is exemplified by Igor鈥檚 Arthur Cope award.鈥