Prashant Kamat, Rev. John A. Zahm Professor of Science at the University of Notre Dame, has been selected to receive two prestigious research awards - the Nanocarbons Division Richard E. Smalley Research Award, given by The Electrochemical Society, and the Porter Medal, given jointly by the European Photochemistry Association, the Inter-American Photochemistry Society, and the Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association.
The Richard E. Smalley Research Award recognizes a person who has made outstanding contributions in the fields of fullerenes, nanotubes, and carbon nanostructures. This award, given every other year, was presented on June 1, 2022 at the 241st Electrochemical Society meeting in Vancouver, with Kamat presenting a lecture entitled “Evolution of Nanocarbons in Energy Conversion and Storage.”
The Porter Medal, named in honor of the late Nobel Laureate Lord George Porter FRSC FRS OM, is conferred every two years to a scientist who has contributed the most to the science of photochemistry. The medal will be awarded at a special Medal Lecture at the 28th IUPAC Symposium on Photochemistry in Amsterdam in July 2022.
Kamat’s research connects physical chemistry and materials science to develop advanced nanomaterials for light energy conversion. The overarching theme of his work is to understand the basic principles behind light-induced charge-transfer processes in nanostructured assemblies. For a myriad of systems, including quantum-confined semiconductors and carbon nanotubes and graphene modified with semiconductor nanoparticles or sensitizing dyes, Kamat has elucidated the mechanistic and kinetic details of the transfer processes leading to the ability to design more effective and efficient light-harvesting materials. Currently, his group is studying photoinduced effects in halide perovskite materials for solar cells, building on his previous findings around bimolecular charge recombination processes and kinetics and thermodynamics of halide ion migration.
Kamat received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Bombay University and completed his postdoctoral training at Boston University and the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Fellow of The Electrochemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Chemical Society, and a Pravasi Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. Kamat has been named to Clarivate/Thomson-Reuters “Highly Cited Researchers” list each year from 2014-2021. Kamat also serves as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of ACS Energy Letters and was previously a deputy editor for the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.