Miller Institute Announces the 2009 Miller Senior Fellow Winner

The Miller Institute is pleased to announce that University Professor Gabor Somorjai has been named as Miller Senior Fellow, for a period of five years to run from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2014.

Professor Somorjai will join Professor Randy Schekman in this Miller Senior Fellowship program, which takes its place alongside the Institute's other programs: the Miller Fellowships, the Miller Research Professorships and the Miller Visiting Professorships.

Within the Institute's general purpose of supporting excellence in science at UC Berkeley, the Miller Senior Fellows program advances that goal by providing distinguished faculty awardees with significant discretionary research funds. The program enhances the Institute's efforts through bringing a group of senior faculty into the Institute who, on a long term basis, can provide mentorship for the Miller Fellows, the creative young women and men who we attract to Berkeley, for the enhancement of the scientific life of the campus and as an occasional route to the recruitment of new members of the Berkeley faculty.

The appointment of Gabor Somorjai continues the tradition of the high standard that we seek for Miller Senior Fellows, set by the appointment of Professor Randy Schekman as the first Senior Fellow. Gabor is a scientific powerhouse with a strong reputation of outstanding citizenry on campus and around world. He helped to transform the science of materials surfaces into the modern, sophisticated molecular scale discipline that it is today. His pioneering contributions to molecular surface chemistry and catalysis have led us towards new and selective catalysts in energy conversion and chemical processes. The combination of instrumentation development for atomic and molecular studies of surfaces and interfaces, and the concepts that emerged from these pioneering studies, is the stamp of Professor Somorjai in the field of surface science. He has accumulated an impressive series of honors and prizes, and has mentored more than 120 PhD students and almost 200 postdoctoral fellows, about 100 of whom hold faculty positions, with many more filling leadership roles in industry. He nevertheless gives his time to many worthy service roles, here in Berkeley, nationally and internationally.

The Miller Institute looks forward to a fruitful and productive relationship with the 2009 Miller Senior Fellow, Professor Gabor Somorjai.

Coverage in The Berkeleyan