image: Emily Carter, senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director for applied materials and sustainability sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)
Credit: David Kelley Crow
Emily Carter, senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director for applied materials and sustainability sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has won the 2024 Marsha I. Lester Award for Exemplary Impact in Physical Chemistry.
Awarded each year by the American Chemical Society (ACS) at its annual fall meeting, the award recognizes an “exemplary impact in physical chemistry research.” Nominees for the award must be members of the ACS’s physical chemistry division. The winner receives the award at the meeting, gives a research presentation, and receives an honorarium. Carter is just the second person to receive this newly established award, following the long-serving editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Professor George Schatz of Northwestern University.
“Being recognized by the ACS is an honor,” Carter said. “For many years, I have used my physical chemistry expertise to help find solutions to global problems like climate change through sustainable energy and carbon mitigation, and have served in multiple leadership roles to multiply these efforts by galvanizing and enabling the work of others. Awards like those given out by the ACS can inspire chemists to work on these and other topics, including helping manufacturing industries transition from using fossil fuels to using green electricity, cleaning up industrial and agricultural waste, and developing new materials to help produce carbon-free fuels like ammonia and hydrogen. Scientists in this field have the chance and responsibility to use their expertise to sustain life on our precious planet for generations to come.”
Carter joined PPPL as its inaugural senior strategic advisor for sustainability science in 2022, where she oversees many of the Laboratory’s diversification efforts. The newly formed Applied Materials and Sustainability Sciences directorate, which Carter leads, is applying the Lab’s expertise in plasma and computational science to advance innovations in microelectronics, quantum materials and devices, and sustainability sciences.
Carter earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and her doctoral degree in physical chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. She has received numerous honors throughout her career, including election to the National Academy of Sciences, Britain’s Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, the National Academy of Engineering, and the European Academy of Sciences.
About the award’s namesake
Lester is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981, she pursued research at Bell Labs and then joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. Her research group “has developed innovative methods for stabilizing ‘entrance channel complexes’ and reaction intermediates of environmental significance. She has performed pioneering experimental studies, employing novel spectroscopic and dynamical methods, often closely coupled theoretical computations, to study reactions that generate, propagate, or consume hydroxyl (OH) radicals, a key initiator of oxidation chemistry.” She was also a transformative editor-in-chief of the Journal of Chemical Physics from 2009 to 2018, enlivening the field through her visionary leadership.
PPPL is mastering the art of using plasma — the fourth state of matter — to solve some of the world's toughest science and technology challenges. Nestled on Princeton University’s Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, New Jersey, our research ignites innovation in a range of applications, including fusion energy, nanoscale fabrication, quantum materials and devices, and sustainability science. The University manages the Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the nation’s single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences. Feel the heat at https://energy.gov/science and http://www.pppl.gov.