RCSA’s 1st Holland Awards Celebrate 6 Distinguished Scholars
Six senior scientists with impressive records of scholarship, leadership, and impact will receive Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s inaugural Robert Holland Jr. Award for Research Excellence and Contributions to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The awards, which honor the late Robert Holland Jr., an engineer and corporate executive who served on RCSA’s Board of Directors, welcome recipients as full members of the Cottrell Scholar community and come with a $5,000 cash prize.
Holland Award recipients will attend annual Cottrell Scholar conferences and be eligible to participate in Cottrell Scholar Collaborative projects to improve STEM education and scientific careers. They will also be eligible for other Cottrell Plus awards, including Cottrell STAR, Cottrell IMPACT, and Cottrell Postbac Awards.
“Bob Holland spent much of his life working for greater opportunity and diversity in STEM education, and the achievements of these awardees truly honor his legacy,” said RCSA President & CEO Daniel Linzer. “As scientists, mentors, and leaders, they bring important new voices and perspectives into the Cottrell Scholar community.”
The 2023 awardees are the chemists Raychelle Burks, American University; Luis Colón, University at Buffalo; Robert Gilliard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ted Goodson, University of Michigan; Malika Jeffries-El, Boston University; and Jane Liu, Pomona College.
Holland Award recipients will be introduced and will give presentations at this year’s Cottrell Scholar Conference, which will be held July 19-21 in Tucson.
“Cottrell Scholars are learners and leaders,” said RCSA Senior Program Director Silvia Ronco. “They designed this award themselves as a way to honor and learn from new colleagues with backgrounds and contributions currently underrepresented in their community.”
Burks, Associate Professor of chemistry at American University, is an outstanding researcher at the interface of chemistry and forensic science, as well as a national award-winning science communicator and dynamic educator. She is a 2020 recipient of the Grady-Stack Award, a national American Chemical Society (ACS) award for interpreting science for the public, and was named by BBC Science Focus Magazine as one of the “6 women who are changing chemistry as we know it.” Her research team, all undergraduates, works to create more reliable field portable sensing systems for forensic applications to minimize false results that can dramatically impact people's lives. By invitation, she contributed chapters on presumptive tests and field-deployable devices to the latest edition of the Encyclopedia of Forensic Sciences and has given numerous high-profile talks. She serves on a joint National Institute of Justice - Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for the Forensic Science subcommittee tasked with revising technical standards for seized drug testing. She co-created and co-leads the National Science Foundation-funded Digital Imaging and Vision Applications in Science (DIVAS) Project, which helps students develop computational skills within an inclusive community of practice, and she was one of the researchers highlighted in the movie Picture a Scientist.
Colón, State University of New York Distinguished Professor and A. Conger Goodyear Professor of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo, has been called one of the “unsung heroes of chemistry” for the outsized impact of his programs on the increase in underrepresented minority faculty hired in chemistry departments in recent years. Beyond establishing a successful research program in separation science, including seminal contributions to ultra-high-pressure liquid chromatography and selective separations, he is a committed teacher and mentor who is deeply engaged in the education and professional growth of students. The pipeline program he designed more than 25 years ago to engage Puerto Rican students in research has been replicated at multiple institutions and has inspired scores of students to pursue doctoral degrees in chemistry. He is a Fellow of the ACS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and in 2015 he was honored by President Barack Obama with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM).
Gilliard, Novartis Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Scialog: Negative Emissions Science award recipient, is a world-class researcher, thoughtful educator, and a champion of underrepresented voices in chemistry. His research team, which focuses on application-enabling fundamental science with a specialization in main-group element, organometallic chemical synthesis, has produced at least 40 peer-reviewed publications and has been recognized by leading national and international news outlets. Their discovery of the first crystalline beryllium radical was highlighted as one of the Chemistry & Engineering News “Molecules of the Year.” His commitment to teaching and innovative course design is demonstrated by an upper-level laboratory course he created to modernize students’ exposure to synthetic chemistry, giving them conceptual and technical skills using equipment for air-sensitive chemistry they need to enter graduate school or join the workforce. Gilliard and his laboratory have also been instrumental in providing mentoring, research, and career development opportunities to students from underrepresented groups, including those who transfer to four-year institutions from community colleges.
Goodson, Richard Barry Bernstein Collegiate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan, is a world-renowned researcher in light-matter interactions with numerous applications in quantum information transfer, energy storage, and biomedical science. Recently elected a Fellow of both the ACS and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, he was also the 2011 recipient of the Julian Percy award from the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers, the organization’s most prestigious award, and is currently the chair of the National Academy of Science Committee on Chemistry in Quantum Information Science Research and Education. The basic science advances from his lab have led to numerous patents and industry collaborations, and his commitment to teaching and mentorship, with a focus on diversity and inclusion, has spanned hosting and mentoring of high school students in his laboratory to outreach and recruitment of students at historically black colleges, leading many of these young researchers to pursue advanced studies. Serving for many years as a Senior Editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Goodson has leveraged this position to focus on inviting and editing perspective articles by prominent scientists of color in chemistry.
Jeffries-El, Professor of Chemistry and Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, is a stellar scientist leading an interdisciplinary program on the development of organic electronic materials. She is also an administrator who works to increase access for underrepresented students. At the national level, she is known for her efforts to increase diversity in the chemical sciences and mitigate bias in peer review. An active ACS member, she has served on numerous local and national committees and editorial and advisory boards including COACh, College Board, OXIDE, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine chemical sciences roundtable. She has held editorial positions at the Journal of Materials Chemistry C and at Materials Advances, and presently serves as an associate editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry flagship journal Chemical Advances. A recipient of the ACS Stanley Israel Award for Increasing Diversity in the Chemical Sciences, she is a sought-after speaker and an engaging science communicator who was featured in a NOVA “Beyond the Elements” segment sharing her excitement for polymers. She was recently named a 2022 AAAS Fellow.
Liu, Associate Professor at Pomona College, is a dedicated teacher-scholar and role model whose pedagogical efforts to make learning spaces on campus more equitable are having an impact beyond her own students and institution. Her ongoing research areas include investigating regulatory RNAs and proteins in Vibrio cholerae, engineering novel RNA-based biosensors, and experimenting and assessing different ways of engaging undergraduate students in science that are centered around inclusion and equity. In late 2020, Liu developed an approach to integrate discussions of antiracism, social justice, and equity throughout the entire semester of an undergraduate biochemistry course. This work was published in the Journal of Chemical Education in 2022 and has since been implemented at several other institutions. She has also incorporated activities centered on diversity, equity, and inclusion into all the chemistry courses she teaches. She is committed to motivating students to pursue life-long careers in science and graduating scientifically literate students who can make rational and informed decisions at the intersection of health, science, and society.
