Awards

Congratulations to this years Graduate Student Award Winners! Our winners are as follows:

F.J. Nicholson Scholarship – Lauren Woolcombe

Arthur S. Hawkes Scholarship in Chemistry – Albert Zehan Li

Ed Shuter Scholarship – Jaelyn Bjornerud-Brown

Edward Piers Memorial Award in Organic Chemistry – Shanal Gunasekera

Brian and Jane James Graduate Scholarship in Catalysis Research –...

The UBC Department of Chemistry is proud to congratulate Dr. Zachary Hudson on being awarded the 2026 Rutherford Memorial Medal in Chemistry, one of Canada’s most prestigious research honours presented by the Royal Society of Canada. Recognized for his innovative work in organic semiconductor materials, Hudson is advancing technologies with applications across the electronics, healthcare, and pharmaceutical sectors. His research has fostered impactful collaborations with industry, including...

Congratulations to the following graduate students for being a recipient of the Graduate Student Summer Research Award!

Agnes and Gilbert Hooley Scholarship in Chemistry

• Elvie Beaumont
• Sydney Bell
• Joseph Chang
• Jad Kaj
• Jingqi Lei
• David Lim
• Chie Nakayama
• Jiahua Tan

Head’s Graduate Student Scholarship

• Conrad Belzberg
• Rida Farhat
• Carina...

Congratulations to Associate Professor of Teaching Kayli Johnson for receiving the H5P Award for Outstanding Visual Design with Simon Lolliot (Department of Psychology). 

H5P is an open-source tool that can be used to create interactive online content. Each year, H5P accepts open nominations and then gives out a handful of international awards for effective and innovative content made using H5P.  The...

Congratulations to PhD student Justin Koh (Mehrkhodavandi Group) for receiving the REX Mentor of the Year Award!

REX is a six month long program designed to help undergraduate students build essential research skills through a proposed research project. At the end of the REX program, mentees will have the opportunity to present their finished projects at the Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference...

Congratulations to Rida Farhat on receiving the 2025 Chemistry Graduate Student Society Prize in Science Outreach!

This prize has been made available through an endowment established by the Chemistry Graduate Student Society (CGSS) for Masters and PhD students in the Department of Chemistry who have made contributions to community engagement and outreach by sharing science with the public. CGSS created this prize to highlight graduate students in the Department of Chemistry who are...

Congratulations to UBC Chemistry alumnus Ryoga Hojo on being named the first-ever recipient of the Chris Orvig Doctoral Prize in Chemistry! Hojo completed his PhD in the Hudson Group, graduating in August 2025.

This annual award recognizes the best PhD thesis in the Department of Chemistry. Hojo’s thesis is titled “Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence: From Rational Design to Applications in Photocatalysis”.

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Assistant Professor Dr. Ilsa Cooke and PhD Student Elsa Yuan have received funding from the UBC Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (G+PS) PhD Collab pilot program for their project "How to build a living planet: the ingredients for life on other worlds".

The PhD Collab is a pilot program originated and funded by G+PS, and has garnered strong interest in its two-year span, with 100 applications from across more...

Congratulations to Professor Katherine Ryan for being the 2026 winner of the Bernard Belleau Award. The Bernard Belleau Award is presented to a scientist residing in Canada who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of medicinal chemistry through research involving biochemical or organic chemical mechanisms.

Dr. Ryan established her own research group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of...