WINNERS BIOGRAPHIES

Angela Belcher

Angela Belcher holds a BA in Creative Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1991), and in 1997 she received a PhD in Chemistry from the same University. Before joining the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002, she has been a member of the faculty of the University of Texas, Austin, from 1999 to 2002.
Dr. Belcher is now the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering at MIT; she is a materials chemist with expertise in the fields of biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid state chemistry. The focus of Prof.

Belcher’s research is understanding and using the process by which nature makes materials in order to design novel hybrid organic-inorganic electronic and magnetic materials on new length scales. Her research is very interdisciplinary in nature and brings together the fields of inorganic chemistry, materials chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology and electrical engineering.

Her researches in new materials have applications in many fields such as solar cells, batteries, catalysts, medical diagnostics and basic single molecule interactions related to disease.
Thanks to her innovative researches she has received many awards including, the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (2000), the Du Pont Young Investigators Award (1999) and the MacArthur Fellowship Award in 2004. Her research was covered in a July 2001 Forbes magazine cover story on nanotechnology and in 2007 Time Magazine has defined her as a “Climate-change hero”.