Zack Ulissi receives 3M award

Carnegie Mellon University Department of Chemical Engineering Assistant Professor Zack Ulissi has received a 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award. This competitive award is presented by multinational industrial and consumer technology company 3M, and is designed to not only recognize the outstanding young faculty who excel in STEM research, academic leadership, and experience, but also as a means of helping them achieve tenure.

This award, totaling $45,000 spread out over three years, will go to support the work of Ulissi’s research group, which uses machine learning and data science to discover and develop new chemical catalysts for a variety of industrial and commercial applications. In particular, this funding will be used to develop new exploratory projects into novel machine learning methods for rapid catalyst testing. It will also go to support student professional development and conference travel.

“The 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award Program illustrates 3M's commitment to leading-edge scientific research in America and is an important part of 3M's greater than a century of commitment to innovation. It also provides a great opportunity for industrial and academic researchers to interact,” says Terry Smith, Technical Director of 3M's Corporate Research Materials Laboratory. 

“The unrestricted awards enable recipients to pursue their own lines of interest and provides an opportunity to come to 3M and interact with their peers,” he explains. “For 3M researchers, it is an additional opportunity to stay in touch with the creative ideas that are stimulating some of the nation's brightest young scientists." 

With this award, Ulissi joins a prestigious cohort of Carnegie Mellon faculty who have received the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award. Past winners include Department of Chemistry Professor Bruce Armitage, and Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Newell Washburn.

“It’s an honor to receive this award from 3M, and to be counted among so many other incredible young faculty,” says Ulissi. “This support will be invaluable to both my own research, and the academic and professional development of my students.”