Departmental Awards

2023-24 recipients of the Graduate Student Awards with Professor Lu Wang, Vice Chair of the Graduate Program

Back row (L to R): Jinzhe Zeng, Callan McLoughlin, Yiling Wang, Erika McCarthy, Brice Kessler Jessica Malcolm
Middle row: Prof. Lu Wang, Sarah Nevins, Xiao Ding, Gia Carignan, Souvik Mandal, Feng Xie, Cassiana Batista da Rocha
Front row: Yongqi Yang, Iram Mansoor, Ryan Crichton, Atul Thakur

Please click here to see the full listing of award winners!

The Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology confers five categories of awards annually. 

Award Categories:

1. Reid Award is awarded for exceptional performance in research; this award is the highest honor and includes a presentation at the awards ceremony. It comes from a chemistry fellowship fund established by the late Dr. Thomas Reid, a Rutgers undergraduate alumnus, who went on to obtain a Ph.D. in biochemistry and a very successful career as an organic chemist at the 3M Corporation, where he developed the material that is the basis of the Scotchgard^TM treatment used in many products.
2. Van Dyke Award is for excellence in research and comes from an endowment set up with funds from a bequest by Prof. Francis C. Van Dyke's niece. Prof. Van Dyke was appointed Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Queens (later Rutgers) College in 1871. Over a long career here, he taught physics, botany, and physiology, as well as chemistry, and served as Dean of the College from 1901-1913.  
3. Krishnamurthy Award is for outstanding paper or thesis in synthetic organic chemistry; research involving animals cannot be considered. The late Dr. S. Krishnamurthy had a long career as an organic chemist, teaching chemistry at Pachaiyappas College in Madras, India and at Tuskegee Institute. He also served as a research chemist with the US Department of Agriculture and the US Environmental Protection Agency. His daughter established the Krishnamurthy Fund in honor of her father's dedication to life-long learning and organic chemistry.
4. Rieman Award, for excellence in undergraduate teaching, was established by the heirs of the late Dr. William Rieman, III. Dr. Rieman was the first person to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry from Rutgers in 1925 and served for many years as a faculty member and finally Chair of the School of Chemistry at Rutgers College. A noted analytical chemist, Dr. Rieman was very interested in undergraduate education.
5. Chemistry Service Award is awarded to a graduate student who has demonstrated a strong record of participation, outreach, and service to the department. 

Award Eligibility:

• Full-time CCB graduate student nominated by PI
• Minimum of one first-author paper from Rutgers
• Minimum GPA of 3.5
• No students past their fifth year

The Graduate Office will notify faculty when nominations open. This usually occurs during the first week of December. To nominate, please provide the student’s CV along with a nomination letter. In the nomination letter, please specify which award or fellowship the student is being nominated for. If nominating more than one student for the same type of award/fellowship, rank them. All nominations will be kept strictly confidential, including the rankings.