The Coblentz Award

2023 Coblentz Award Recipient – Prof. Dr. Wei Xiong

The Coblentz Society is pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Wei Xiong of the University of California, San Diego has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Coblentz Award.  The Coblentz Award is presented annually to an outstanding young molecular spectroscopist and is the Society’s original and most prestigious award.  

Wei Xiong is a Full Professor and Kent Wilson Faculty Scholar in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. Wei received his B.S. degree from Peking University, China, in 2006. He then joined Prof. Martin Zanni’s group at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and completed his Ph.D. degree in 2011. At Madison, Wei focused on developing novel 2D vibrational spectroscopy (transient 2D IR and heterodyne 2D SFG spectroscopy) to study molecules on solid-state material surfaces. Wei then moved to the University of Colorado, Boulder, and JILA, in 2011, where he worked with Prof. Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn to develop the table-top XUV source for ultrafast measurements and time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy for nanoparticles. He joined the faculty at the University of California San Diego in 2014.

At UCSD, Wei’s research focuses on using and developing ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopic and imaging tools to reveal molecular structures and dynamics of materials, including ultrafast dynamics of polaritonic systems, guest molecule adsorptions in self-assembled materials, femtosecond charge transfer dynamics on organic material interfaces. Specifically, he has pioneered the field of molecular polaritonics, where he applied multidimensional spectroscopy to reveal the underline mechanisms of how molecular systems under strong coupling to photonic modes can modify chemical reactions. He has also developed hyperspectral vibrational imaging techniques to reveal microscopic molecular structures and mesoscopic morphology in materials, interfaces, and biological tissues.

He has received several awards, including the Sloan Fellowship, the NSF CAREER award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, DARPA Director’s Fellow, and PHYS/JPC Lectureship Award.

2022 Coblentz Award Recipient – Dr. L. Robert Baker

Robert Baker’s research interests are in ultrafast spectroscopy, heterogeneous catalysis, and surface science.  His group has expanded the application of XUV spectroscopy to study electron dynamics at surfaces.  He developed a reflection analog to XUV transient absorption, which provides real-time observation of element-specific charge and spin states with surface sensitivity and femtosecond time resolution.  His group also employs sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy to study the effects of electric fields, ion solvation, and interfacial water structure on electrochemical catalysis.

Robert Baker’s work has been recognized by a number of awards, including the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award (2015), Department of Energy Early Career Award (2015), Young Innovator Award in Nano-Energy (2019), Journal of Physical Chemistry / PHYS Division Lectureship (2020), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2020), Emerging Leader in Atomic Spectroscopy (2021), and John Von Neumann Distinguished Fulbright Scholar.  He currently serves as the principal investigator and co-director of the NSF National eXtreme Ultrafast Science (NeXUS) facility.

2021 Coblentz Award Recipient – Prof. Dr. Sandra Luber

The Coblentz Society is pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Sandra Luber of the University of Zurich has been selected as the recipient of the 2021 Coblentz Award.  The Coblentz Award is presented annually to an outstanding young molecular spectroscopist and is the Society’s original and most prestigious award.  Due to complications arising from the COVID-19 situation, the date and place of the award presentation has not yet been determined.

Sandra Luber obtained her MSc in chemistry at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2007 and her PhD in theoretical chemistry under the supervision of Markus Reiher in 2009. After postdoctoral stays in the group of Mihaela Zavolan at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel (Switzerland) and the group of Victor S. Batista at Yale University (U.S.A.), she joined BASF SE in Germany.  In 2012, she became project group leader at the University of Zurich where she completed the habilitation thesis in 2016 and became professor in 2017.  In 2021, she was promoted to associate professor for Computational Chemistry.

Sandra Luber’s research deals with the development and application of novel computational methods, among others, with focus on absorption and vibrational spectroscopy.  Aside from purpose-driven static methods for molecular vibrational spectra, she has put emphasis on dynamic first-principles methods (e.g., by means of ab initio molecular dynamics) in order to simulate gas and condensed phase systems in a sophisticated manner. Examples include novel approaches for the modelling of vibrational spectra for chiral systems or interfaces via efficient density functional perturbation theory as well as electron dynamics via real time propagation and its application to electronic and vibrational (resonance) spectroscopy.  Moreover, methods for nonadiabatic dynamics in the condensed phase have been explored recently.

Sandra Luber’s contributions have been recognized by various grants and awards.  Selected awards include the Clara Immerwahr Award (2017, first theoretician awarded), the Robin Hochstrasser Young Investigator Award (2017, first woman awarded), the Hans G. A. Hellmann Award (2017, first woman awarded), the Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society (2018), the Jochen Block Prize of the German Catalysis Society (2019), the OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (2019), and the Carl Duisberg Gedaechtnispreis of the German Chemical Society (2019).

2020 Coblentz Award Recipient – Dr. Benjamin P. Fingerhut

The Coblentz Society will present the 2020 Coblentz Award to Dr. Benjamin P. Fingerhut of the Theory Department, Max Born Institute at the 2021 International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS). ISMS will be virtual, and the award will be presented on Tuesday, June 22nd at 8:00 a.m. CDT followed by Dr. Fingerhut’s plenary award lecture “Noncovalent Interactions of Hydrated DNA and RNA Mapped by 2D-IR Spectroscopy.”

Benjamin Fingerhut studied chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany. In 2011 he completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physical Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Regina de Vivie-Riedle. He joined the group of Prof. Shaul Mukamel at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) as a postdoctoral fellow in September 2011. In 2014 he moved to the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI), Berlin, Germany, where he is currently heading the Biomolecular Dynamics research group.

Dr. Fingerhut’s research focuses on the real-time investigation of ultrafast structural dynamics of molecular and biomolecular systems. The group aims at novel computational simulation protocols suited to investigate nonadiabatic relaxation phenomena in vibrational and electronic excited states. In close collaboration with experimentalists, he applies vibrational probes for the quantification of noncovalent interactions of hydrated biomolecules in aqueous environments. The group developed a numerically efficient path integral method for the description of open quantum systems. 

Dr. Fingerhut’s contributions to science have been recognized by many awards and grants, including the Coblentz Award, an ERC Starting Grant (2018), the Robin Hochstrasser Young Investigator Award (2016), the Emmy Noether Early Career Grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG) (2014), and the Feodor-Lynen-Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation (2012).

Recent Coblentz Award Recipients

2016 

Kenneth Knappenberger, Jr.

2012 

Greg Engel

1979
Lionel A. Carreira

1978
Lester Andrews

1977
Peter R. Griffiths

1976
Geoffrey Ozin / George Thomas, Jr.

1975
Bernard J. Bulkin

1974
C. K. N. Patel

1973
C. Bradley Moore

1972
George E. Leroi

1971
Clive Perry

1970
Guiseppi Zerbi

1969
James R. Durig

1968
Jon T. Hougen

1967
Peter Krueger

1966
Edwin Becker

1965
William Fateley / Robert Snyder

1964
John Overend