Finally, with COVID-19 on the downfall our Department was slowly returning back to normal. 2022 was another year filled with success. An undergraduate, Alison Wang, was awarded a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for 2022-23. She enrolled at the U and declared chemistry as her major, with her eyes set on going to medical school. However, her honors general chemistry professor, Luisa Whittaker-Brooks, encouraged her to seek a research opportunity in Caroline Saouma’s lab as a freshman. She then was awarded the 2022 Undergraduate Student Utah Award. Aria Ballance was a third-year graduate student when she was selected for the 2022 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Reserve Office, and the Office of Naval Research, it is a highly competitive fellowship with over 3,000 applicants and only 50 awardees.

While these students were honored with prestigious awards, our faculty members also received recognition. Valeria Molinero Elected to the National Academy of Sciences 2022, Luisa Whittaker was the recipient of the Brooks 2022 U Presidential Scholar, and at the 2022 PHYS Awards banquet in Chicago, the Executive Committee voted to rename the longstanding senior theory award to honor Jack Simons. It is now called the Jack Simons Award in Theoretical Physical Chemistry. Along with these faculty members, Vahe Bandarian was selected for a fellowship through the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and Peter Stang was One of Clarivate’s Most Cited Scientists! Scott Anderson received the Outstanding Chemist Award in recognition of his contributions to the field, James Muller was awarded the Professional Chemist award, and finally, Distinguished Professor Dr. Cynthia Burrows was the 2022 Pauling Medal awardee.

The Department experienced another successful year in 2022, yet it was not without its share of tragedy. Emeritus Faculty colleague, Wesley G. Bentrude, passed away on October 4.  Prior to joining the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at Utah in 1964, Wes earned a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, spent two years working as a Research Chemist at Celanese, followed by a year of postdoctoral research at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Hannah Laya Kesner also passed away this year. She started as a graduate student at Utah in 1967 and completed a Ph.D. working on the then-new method of field-flow fractionation under the direction of Professor J. Calvin Giddings in 1974.