Learn about the 2026 winners of ACS Publications' Organic and Inorganic Chemistry lectureships and awards.
ACS Publications journals proudly highlight researchers whose innovative work is reshaping the landscape of chemical science.
The 2026 Organic and Inorganic Chemistry lectureship and award recipients exemplify this spirit of discovery, standing out for both their scientific impact and their leadership within the community.
Along with celebrating their achievements, this year’s winners reflect on the broader significance of their research and the directions in which their fields are moving.
In their interviews, each awardee shares insights on:
- What the award means to them
- The inspiration behind their pursuit of their field of research
- What the biggest opportunities and challenges are in their field of research currently
Browse by Award or Winner:
2026 Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship
- Winner: Dr. Julia Zaikina
2026 Organic Letters Outstanding Publication of the Year Award Lectureship
- Winner: Prof. Marvin Parasram
2026 Organic Process Research & Development Outstanding Publication of the Year Lectureship Award
- Winner: Richard Loach
2026 Organometallics Distinguished Author Award
- Winner: Prof. Courtney C. Roberts
2026 The Journal of Organic Chemistry Outstanding Publication of the Year Award Lectureship
- Winner: Jun Xiao
2026 Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship
Sponsored by Inorganic Chemistry and the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry, this award recognizes an early career researcher who has demonstrated creativity and impact in leading research in inorganic chemistry, broadly defined.
Winner: Dr. Julia Zaikina, Associate Professor, Iowa State University (USA)
Dr. Zaikina is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry at Iowa State University and scientist at Ames National Laboratory. She holds a Ph.D. in Inorganic and Solid State Chemistry and, after two postdoctoral stints at Florida State University and UC Davis, she joined the faculty at Iowa State University as an assistant professor in 2017. Dr. Zaikina’s research group utilizes a synergistic combination of diffraction and total scattering techniques and computational methods to establish the structure of the complex solids.
Dr. Zaikina is recognized for advancing synthetic solid‑state chemistry through pioneering innovative synthetic strategies that bridge computational prediction and experiment to create complex inorganic materials, uncovering new borides, antimonides, and functional solids that address current scientific challenges in sustainable energy.
Dr. Zaikina will be honored at an upcoming Award Symposium at ACS Fall 2026 in Chicago, between August 23-27 2026.
2026 Organic Letters Outstanding Publication of the Year Award Lectureship
This award recognizes the research team behind an outstanding Letter published in an issue of Organic Letters in 2025 that demonstrates creativity and impact in the field of organic chemistry, broadly based.
This lectureship is awarded in partnership with Organic Letters and the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry.
Winner: Prof. Marvin Parasram and colleagues, New York University (USA)
Prof. Parasram earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Stony Brook University in 2010 and completed his Ph.D. with Vladimir Gevorgyan at the University of Illinois Chicago. After an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Abigail Doyle at Princeton, he joined NYU as an Assistant Professor in 2020. His lab develops sustainable heteroatom‑transfer reactions using photoexcited 1,3‑dipoles. His work has earned major honors, including the NIH MIRA (2023), Amgen Young Investigator Award (2024), NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award (2024), NSF CAREER (2025), Camille Dreyfus Teacher‑Scholar Award (2025), and Sloan Fellowship (2026).
Winning Article: “Merging Photoexcited Nitroarenes with Lewis Acid Catalysis for the Anti-Markovnikov Oxidation of Alkenes”
Prof. Parasram will be honored for his winning research at an upcoming Award Symposium at ACS Fall 2026 in Chicago, between August 23-27 2026.
2026 Organic Process Research & Development Outstanding Publication of the Year Lectureship Award
This award recognizes the research team behind an outstanding article published in an issue of Organic Process Research & Development (OPR&D) in 2025 that demonstrates creativity and impact in the field of process chemistry and related disciplines associated with reaction scale-up.
This lectureship is awarded in partnership with Organic Process Research & Development and the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry.
Winner: Dr. Richard Loach and colleagues, Pfizer (USA)
Richard earned a Chemistry BSc from Imperial and a PGCE from King’s College London. After three years teaching in South London, he completed his MSc (2009) and PhD (2013) at Laval University on natural product synthesis. He then held a postdoc at MIT before joining Pfizer in 2016, contributing to ADC chemistry, photoredox technology, and later inflammation and immunology programs. He has supported projects from early discovery to scale‑up and actively fosters academic collaborations with groups such as Keary Engle and Mary Watson.
Winning Article: “Building Efficient Diastereo- and Enantioselective Synthetic Routes to trans-Cyclopropyl Esters for Rapid Lead Scale-Up”
Richard will be honored for his winning research at an upcoming Award Symposium at ACS Fall 2026 in Chicago, between August 23-27 2026.
2026 Organometallics Distinguished Author Award
This award recognizes an early-career author of exceptional articles published in Organometallics during the past two years (2024-2025). The recipient is selected for their work emphasizing the importance of organometallic chemistry and having a profound impact on organic and inorganic chemistry as a whole.
This lectureship is awarded in partnership with Organometallics, the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, and the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry.
Winner: Prof. Courtney C. Roberts, University of Twin Cities, Minnesota (USA)
Prof. Roberts is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota and the recipient of multiple institutional honors, including the 3M Alumni Professorship and the McKnight Land‑Grant Professorship. She obtained her B.S. in chemistry from Pepperdine University and her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prof. Roberts then completed her postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan, where she explored C–H functionalization reactions using high valent Ni. She began her career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Fall of 2019.
The Roberts Group focuses on the development of d0 metal catalysts for alkyl–alkyl cross coupling as well as harnessing heterocyclic aryne intermediates for medicinally relevant building blocks and new methods in photoredox catalysis.
She is recognized for her work using metal coordination to stabilize otherwise inaccessible aryne complexes, enabling new heteroarene difunctionalization strategies and advancing fundamental early transition metal organometallic chemistry.
2026 The Journal of Organic Chemistry Outstanding Publication of the Year Award Lectureship
This award recognizes the research team behind an outstanding article published in an issue of The Journal of Organic Chemistry in 2025 that demonstrates creativity and impact in the field of organic chemistry, broadly based.
This lectureship is awarded in partnership with The Journal of Organic Chemistry and the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry.
Winner: Dr. Jun Xiao and colleagues, Pfizer (USA)
Jun earned a BSc and MSc in Chemistry from Beijing Normal University before moving to the U.S. in 1997 to complete a second MSc at Stony Brook University in supramolecular chemistry. She joined Pfizer in 1999 as a synthetic medicinal chemist and has spent over 25 years contributing to programs in oncology, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and rare diseases, from early discovery to large‑scale synthesis. Since 2019, she has served as an outsourcing liaison and now leads synthetic chemistry efforts for an oncology program at Pfizer.
Winning Article: “C(sp2)–C(sp3) Suzuki–Miyaura Cross-Coupling Using gem-Bis(boronates)”
Jun will be honored for her winning research at an upcoming Award Symposium at ACS Fall 2026 in Chicago, between August 23-27 2026.
Stay informed about upcoming nomination opportunities
Bookmark the post below and check back throughout the year for the latest news and announcements about nominations for future Organic and Inorganic Chemistry lectureships and awards.
Organic and Inorganic Chemistry Lectureships and Awards
Explore nomination opportunities and browse the lectureship and award winner archives from ACS Publications' Organic and Inorganic Chemistry portfolio.
