CBES director Samuel Stupp elected to National Academy of Sciences

Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science (CBES) director Samuel Stupp has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the academy announced April 27. In a tweet, the NAS said Stupp was selected because of “outstanding contributions to supramolecular and materials chemistry.”

Membership in the academy is one of the highest honors given to a scientist in the United States and recognizes distinguished achievements in original research. Stupp and the other electees — 120 new members and 26 new international members in all —  will be inducted at the academy’s annual meeting next April.

Stupp is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Spanish Royal Academy and the National Academy of Inventors. He is also a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Stupp’s work integrates chemistry with materials science, biology and medicine. The overarching interest of his research group is the development of self-assembling organic materials, focusing on functions relevant to energy and medicine.

One of his landmark achievements was the development of bioactive materials that can signal cells and be used in novel therapies for regenerative medicine. His work has led to the development of supramolecular biomaterials that mimic the natural structures surrounding cells in the human body and activate the necessary signals to initiate the growth of tissues such as bone, cartilage, muscle, blood vessels, and the spinal cord, among others. In the field of energy materials, Stupp has designed bio-inspired supramolecular materials to generate solar fuels, thus mimicking the photosynthetic machinery of plants, soft materials with photovoltaic capacity to convert solar energy to electricity, and very recently materials that exhibit robotic functions.

Stupp is Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern. He directs the Simpson Querrey Institute and its two affiliated research centers, CBES and the Center for Regenerative Nanomedicine.

He has published more than 450 papers and received numerous national and international awards, including most recently the 2020 Nanoscience Prize from the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering.