Chemistry Professor Brooks Pate earned one of this year's 23 coveted MacArthur fellowships, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Tuesday. The foundation aims to support research, policy development, dissemination, education and training, and practice to improve life quality.
Pate received the news of his $500,000 grant, highly regarded as one of the most prestigious national awards in academic circles, by phone last Thursday.
"I was told that this was a secure line, and I thought, 'Oh no, what have I done now?'" he said.
He and the five students who work with him study the dynamics of molecules with significant amounts of vibrational energy. They use light to re-shape molecules and change their structures in order to control and analyze them.
Pate said he has learned through his work that a molecule does not have one single static structure.
"We must give up the idea that we know where atoms on a molecule are," he said. "They are schizophrenic," everywhere at once.
"By understanding that there is not one structure, but that different structures behave differently, we can learn to use light to make molecules take shape and react the way we want them to."
Pate said he wants to screen molecules to find out which ones change shape and which don't, to learn which reactions can potentially bring the most destruction. A scientist can study certain reactions to get an idea of the speed of the reactions that result in global warming, for example, he added.
Candidates are nominated anonymously for this fellowship - there is no application or interview process. Pate joins more than 600 other fellows that have been chosen since the program began in 1981. About 20 to 30 fellows are selected annually.
The recipients are under no obligation to report on how they plan to use their awards.
"Those selected were chosen based on their extraordinary creativity, and they should be rewarded without being encumbered," MacArthur Foundation spokesman Rodney Ferguson said . "Their work should speak for itself."
Pate has been a faculty member since 1993, becoming a full professor in 1999. During the spring semester he teaches Chemistry 282, which is the fourth semester of the honors chemistry sequence.
He is the University's third professor - but its first scientist - to receive the MacArthur Fellowship. Writer James Alan McPherson won in 1981, and philosopher Richard Rorty earned the recognition in 1982.
Chemistry Department Associate Chairman Bob Burnett praised Pate for his contributions to the department.
"He is an exceptional experimentalist and theorist as well as a dedicated and excellent teacher," Burnett said.
The 36-year-old physical chemist is not new to the University.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University with a bachelor's degree in 1987. In 1992, he received a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
His other honors include the 1993 Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award, a National Research Council Postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., from 1992 to 1993, and the 1998 Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award. He is also the youngest recipient of The 1999 Colblentz Award, awarded annually to an outstanding young molecular spectroscopist.
Pate said he expects to spend much, if not all, of his fellowship on more specialized equipment.
"It's nice to know other people realize it's good work. The quality of data we get is outstanding, and I have to recognize and thank my students for that," he said.
Read More
PBS NewsHour correspondent speaks on bringing humanity to international conflict
By Grace Little | 15 hours agoSchifrin's work exploring Putin’s Russia, his coverage of COVID-19 and his reporting in Afghanistan and Ukraine have earned him various accolades.
Spring meal swipe drive aims to tackle food insecurity at the University
By Nicolas Biernacki | 16 hours agoU.Va. Dine facilitated the drive by converting each meal swipe donated by a student into one pound of food that is then donated to the CFP.
Winsome Earle-Sears talks higher education in first U.Va. event of the campaign
By Ford McCracken | 2 days agoA Jamaican immigrant and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Earle-Sears is the first female lieutenant governor of Virginia,
