STROBE Awards

ENY ACS recognized Dr. Kwabena Bediako with the 2025 Buck-Whitney Award. Dr. Bediako’s work in magnetic solids offers promising solutions to accelerating energy demand by electronic and computing systems.

This award was established by the Eastern New York ACS section executive committee in 1976. The name of the award, Buck-Whitney, was chosen to recognize two of the most eminent research directors in the section. The purpose of the award is to recognize excellent original contributions to pure and applied chemistry. The recipient is preferably someone who has not yet achieved national recognition as evidenced by a national award from the ACS. The recipient is expected to deliver an address before the meeting at which the award is made.

Prof. Naomi Ginsberg received the W. Albert Noyes, Jr. Distinguished Lecturer honor from the University of Rochester. This lectureship honors Professor Noyes, former chairman of the department, dean of the Graduate School and dean of the College of Arts and Science. Naomi’s talk was titled, “Visualizing and Controlling How Emerging Energy Materials Form, Transform, and Transport Energy at the Nanoscale.”

The UCLA Academic Senate selected Prof. Jose Rodriguez to receive the inaugural Academic Senate Service Rising Star Award. This award celebrates and recognizes UCLA Senate faculty who are in an early stage of their Senate service and have demonstrated a noteworthy contribution to the Academic Senate. A noteworthy contribution may include activities such as consistent and meaningful participation in committee or council meetings or projects; effective chairship of a subcommittee, special committee or task force; championing shared governance; or demonstrating Senate leadership potential. Preference is given to Senate members who have not yet chaired a standing committee or council. Current committee and council chairs, Senate Leadership and Senate staff are eligible to nominate candidates. Congratulations, Jose!

Prof. Franklin Dollar received the 2025 AISES Technical Excellence Award. The Technical Excellence awardee has made a significant contribution to science, engineering, or technology by having designed, developed, managed, or assisted in the development of a product, service, system, or intellectual property.

AISES professional honorees go beyond personal achievements, extending their commitment to excellence to co-workers, family, community youth, and Tribal and First Nations. Their narratives, intricately woven with resilience, hard work, dedication, and discovery, form the core of AISES stories.

AISES Professional Awardees are perpetual learners and visionaries, driven by a fervor for fostering high-quality collective thinking. As builders, they craft platforms that empower their organizations and communities. Whether embracing formal science later in life or creatively infusing Indigenous values into their work, these trailblazers produce innovation and inspiration. Congratulations, Franklin!

José L. Godínez Castellanos is a 2025-2026 Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemistry working with Professor. Naomi S. Ginsberg. José’s current work revolves around understanding charge carrier and thermal transport, and their interconversion in solid state doped silver selenide thermoelectrics. He uses stroboscopic interferometric scattering to provide a spatially- and time-resolved perspective of energy transport in these materials. This approach offers a new framework where we probe a material’s intrinsic properties and the effect of mesoscale structure in thermal transport—helping chemists understand the effects of dopants and design high-efficiency thermoelectrics.

José’s PhD work explored different structural effects (e.g., sequence, conformers, chromatin region location) that modulate the ultrafast formation of cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers in DNA after absorption of UV light. José received a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Southern California, and a B.S. in Chemistry from the California State University, Stanislaus.

Congratulations to Yueyun Chen, a graduate student in Chris Regan’s group, for receiving the 2025 Castaing Award for Best Student Paper from Microscopy & Microanalysis!

Prof. Kwabena Bediako received the 2025 Calvin University Alumni Award. This award is granted to Calvin alumni in recognition of young grads who are making a splash in their careers and communities, thus personifying the mission of the Calvin Alumni Association. Congratulations, Kwabena!

Prof. Andy Minor has been elected as a 2025 MSA Fellow. The designation “MSA Fellow” is intended to recognize those who have been conferred the Society’s Distinguished Scientist Awards, as well as senior distinguished members of the Society who have made significant contributions to the advancement of the field of microscopy and microanalysis through a combination of scientific achievement and service to the scientific community and the Society itself. MSA Fellows duly elected by recommendation of the Fellows Committee. Congratulations, Andy!