Ralph G. Nuzzo

Winner of the 2022 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience.

Ralph G. Nuzzo is an American chemist based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he is the G. L. Clark Professor of Chemistry. He studied at Rutgers University where he obtained his degree in chemistry in 1976, before moving to MIT to work on his PhD in organic chemistry, which he obtained in 1980.

Straight after his PhD he was employed at Bell Labs where he worked until 1991 as Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in Materials Research, before moving to Illinois as a faculty member. During his period at Bell Labs he collaborated with David Allara on the development of molecular films on gold, and their characterization techniques, which are among the milestones in the field of self-assembled monolayers.

During his research career, Professor Nuzzo studied a large number of properties of molecular films, several approaches to three-dimensional molecular assembly and their application to a variety of applications, including batteries, fuel cells and solar cells.

Since 2014 he has also been an affiliated professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a fellow of several academic societies, including the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society, and he is a co-recipient of the IEEE George E. Smith Award.