Gregory H. Robinson, Franklin Professor and Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia, has been honored with a national award from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

If you want to increase your car's gas mileage or build a more powerful handheld electronic device, don't bend steel or slice silicon chips. Manipulate nanomaterials and molecules instead.

"Using ultraviolet light, chemists have reversibly immobilized molecules on surfaces (J. Am. Chem. Soc., DOI: 10.1021/ja302970x). The technique could be used to develop repairable microarrays or to study how biochemical events on surfaces progress with time. 

Gregory H. Robinson, Franklin Professor and Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia, is one of a select group of international academics awarded a 2012 Humboldt Research Award from Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

The award is valued at 60,000 euro (approximately $80,000), and Robinson is the second UGA chemist to receive the award in as many years.

Five graduate students in the Department of Chemistry have been awarded the 2012 Outstanding Teaching Award. These awards are conferred annually by the UGA Center for Teaching and Learning. The recipients, (left-to-right in photo) Daniel Sexton, Matthew Davidson, Timothy Pope, Robert Gilliard and Christopher Nealon, are recognized for their outstanding contributions to instruction by students serving as teaching assistants in the classroom or laboratory.

Geert-Jan Boons, Franklin Professor of Chemistry, was awarded the Inventor's Award in the 2012 Creative Research Awards. The award recognizes an inventor for a unique and innovative discovery that has made an impact on the community.

Dr. Charles Kutal, chemistry professor and associate dean of the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has been named one of the best undergraduate teachers in the nation by the Princeton Review and RateMyProfessors.com. Dr. Kutal was included among The Best 300 Professors which was released April 3^rd, 2012. Two other UGA faculty were also included on this list: Dr. John Knox, an associate professor of geography, and Dr. Audrey Haynes, an associate professor of political science.

The Southeastern Universities Research Association announced Henry F. Schaefer III, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry at the University of Georgia, as its 2012 SURA Distinguished Scientist Award.

The annual honor goes to a research scientist whose extraordinary work fulfills the SURA mission of "fostering excellence in scientific research." The award and its $20,000 honorarium was presented to Schaefer on March 29 in conjunction with the SURA Board of Trustees meeting being held at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Assistant Professor Shanta Dhar has been granted a three-year Idea development Award from the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Prostate Cancer Research Program (DoD-PCRP) for her grant entitled, “Combined Chemotherapy and Anti-Inflammatory Therapy for Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer (CRPC) using a Nanoparticle Platform.” This study aims to develop a targeted combination therapeutic approach for the treatment for metastatic prostate cancer using a highly engineered nanoparticle.

Researchers from the University of Georgia and the Mayo Clinic in Arizona have developed a vaccine that dramatically reduces tumors in a mouse model that mimics 90 percent of human breast and pancreatic cancer cases—including those resistant to common treatments.

The vaccine, described this week in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals a promising new strategy for treating cancers that share the same distinct carbohydrate signature, including ovarian and colorectal cancers.