Alice Kunin named a Beckman Young Investigator
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Alice Kunin has been named a 2025 Beckman Young Investigator by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation for her innovative ideas within the imaging and spectroscopy field and, ultimately, for their clean energy applications.
The program provides support for exceptional young faculty in the early stages of their careers, prioritizing blue sky thinking that opens up new avenues of research. Kunin is one of just 10 faculty members nationally to receive the distinction.
Although the ethos of the Foundation is to recognize people rather than projects, Kunin submitted a proposal, “Imaging the Role of Topological Surface States in Efficient Heterogeneous Catalysis,” that dovetails with the Foundation’s emphasis on new instruments and methodologies.
Kunin will develop and build a spectroscopy tool allowing her to probe the surfaces of a family of topological materials that show great promise for use as semiconductors.
“I was thrilled to hear the news about the BYI Award,” said Kunin, who opened her lab just a year ago. “The Foundation is very supportive of high-risk, high-reward science, which is key anytime you want to develop instrumentation.”
The Kunin Lab hopes to use the knowledge gained from this research to identify materials or surfaces that can be more finely optimized for specific kinds of industrial uses.
Beckman Young Investigators are generally funded for four years. The award is open only to tenure-track professors who are within their first four years of an independent academic career.
Similar to semiconductors, topological materials are thought to have unique properties related to how electrons travel across their surfaces that could make them effective catalysts for a whole range of chemical reactions. But we do not have a clear understanding of exactly what happens at their surfaces in more complex chemical environments.
“There’s a lot of interest in the community for these topological materials in part because they could be used for more robust, more stable catalysis,” Kunin said. “But there’s no clear evidence demonstrating that’s true and that the reactivity is linked to their special topological nature. That’s what we’re going to be able to directly image with our new technique.
“If successful, I am most excited about watching real-time chemical reactions on material surfaces in step-by-step detail,” Kunin added. “The sensitivity and precision of our measurements enabled by this new instrumentation will be a key innovation for economically catalyzing the production of sustainable fuels.”
Read the Foundation press release here.
Located in Irvine, California, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation supports researchers and nonprofit research institutions in making the next generation of breakthroughs in chemistry and the life sciences. The Foundation has been selecting young researchers for these awards since 1991.