Prize Recipient

Luisa Whittaker-Brooks
University of Utah

Luisa Whittaker-Brooks is an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Utah whose research focuses on synthesizing and elucidating the functional properties of well-defined and high-quality organic and inorganic materials for applications in photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, batteries, spintronics, and electronics. Her efforts are focused on three different directions in the areas of materials chemistry, i.e., synthetic inorganic-organic chemistry, spectroscopy, and nanofabrication of functional devices. Her research also focuses on an aspect that is often overlooked in materials chemistry and physics: generating a fundamental understanding of what happens at the interfaces of organic-inorganic hybrid materials in order to control charge (spin) injection, transport, manipulation, and detection in devices. Dr. Whittaker-Brooks received her B.S. in analytical chemistry from the University of Panama. Under a Fulbright Fellowship, she received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in materials chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. She was the recipient of the 2013 Loréal Fellowship for Women in Science Award and the Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Recently, she was named a Scialog Fellow by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and a young leader by The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society.