Nanoscience Pioneer Fraser Stoddart to Join Northwestern Faculty

J. Fraser Stoddart, a pioneer in the fields of nanoscience and organic chemistry, will join the Northwestern University faculty as Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry, the university announced Thursday. He will also direct the university's new Center for the Chemistry of Integrated Systems. Stoddart invented a field of chemistry that enables the construction of molecular switches and nanoelectronic devices and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). He also created nanovalves, which are much smaller than living cells and capable of crossing cell membranes, now being adapted as drug-delivery systems for cancer cells. Currently the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanosystems Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles and director of the California NanoSystems Institute, Stoddart will bring a research group of about 25 to Northwestern's Evanston, Ill., campus by January 2008. A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, he came to UCLA in 1997 from England's University of Birmingham, where he had been a professor of organic chemistry since 1990 and had headed the university's School of Chemistry since 1993. He received his bachelor of science and PhD degrees from the University of Edinburgh. He is the recipient of numerous chemistry awards and is a member of several professional societies and associations; he also serves on the international advisory boards of numerous journals and has published more than 800 scientific papers. Stoddart was appointed as a Knight Bachelor in 2007 by Queen Elizabeth II for his chemistry and molecular nanotechnology contributions.