Living in a Materials World

Angela Belcher Receives Ireland Award as Distinguished Visiting Scholar

Claude Bennett, Angela Belcher, and Greg Pence

The 2010 Ireland Distinguished Visiting Scholar Award recipient, MacArthur Foundation 2004 “Genius Grant” winner Angela Belcher, Ph.D., delivered a public lecture on February 11 in the Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center. The Germehausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Belcher lectured on “Engineering Organisms as Building Block Materials for Energy and Electronics.”

Belcher’s research is focused on understanding and using the process by which nature makes materials in order to design new hybrid, organic, and inorganic materials. Her work has been published in numerous scientific journals, including Science and Nature, and has been described in popular magazines such as Time and Scientific American. Belcher earned her bachelor’s degree in creative studies in 1991 and her doctorate in chemistry in 1997 from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Ireland Distinguished Visiting Scholar Award, which comes with a $10,000 cash prize and an additional $5,000 for expenses, brings internationally renowned scholars in the arts and sciences to UAB to present a public lecture, attend a dinner in his or her honor, and participate in campus activities. The prize is made possible through an endowment established by Caroline P. and Charles W. Ireland in 1984 and was first awarded in 1992.

Maintaining the Momentum / Summer 2010