Hammes-Schiffer Recognized for Research Achievements

1 December 2006—Sharon Hammes-Schiffer, the Eberly Professor of Biotechnology and professor of chemistry at Penn State, recently received the Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award for research achievement from the Iota Sigma Pi National Honor Society for Women in Chemistry. Nominees for this medal must be female chemists or biochemists not over forty years of age at the time of their nomination.

Hammes-Schiffer also has received the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science Medal. This medal is presented “to a young member of the scientific community who is distinguished by pioneering and important scientific contributions.” Hammes-Schiffer was recognized for "her development of innovative theories of electron and proton dynamics with insightful applications to biological processes."

An acknowledged world leader in biophysics, her research spans the fields of chemistry, physics, biology, and computer science. Her research centers on the theoretical and computational investigation of charge-transfer reactions that play a vital role in many chemical and biological processes. She has developed analytical theories and computational methods to clarify the role of protein motion in enzyme catalysis and to examine reactions such as hydrogen tunneling in solution and in proteins. She has applied these approaches to a wide range of experimentally relevant systems. Her work has elucidated fundamental principles of proton-coupled electron-transfer reactions. In addition, her group has developed a nuclear electronic-orbital method to incorporate nuclear quantum effects into electronic-structure calculations. Her research has important implications for protein engineering and drug design, and for the interpretation of experimental results in this field.

Hammes-Schiffer has been recognized with the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1999, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1998, a Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities in 1998, and a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation in 1996. She has served as a Senior Editor for The Journal of Physical Chemistry since 2001 and is on the editorial advisory boards of Accounts of Chemical Research and Theoretical Chemistry Accounts. She was a charter member of a study section for the National Institutes of Health, and served as chair of the Theoretical Subdivision of the American Chemical Society. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society. She also is a member of the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa and the scientific research society Sigma Xi.

She has published 85 scientific papers and has given more than 130 invited talks and seminars. In 2004, she was selected as an Alexander M. Cruickshank Lecturer for the Gordon Research Conference on Isotopes, an Ephraim and Wilma Shaw Roseman Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, a Lucy Pickett Lecturer at Mount Holyoke College, a Donald Lecturer at McGill University, and a Woodward Lecturer at Harvard University.

Hammes-Schiffer joined Penn State in 2000 as the Shaffer Associate Professor of Chemistry and was promoted to professor in 2003. In 2006, she was named the Eberly Professor of Biotechnology. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, she was the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Notre Dame from 1995 to 2000. She conducted postdoctoral research at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1993 to 1995 and was a graduate research assistant at Stanford University from 1988 to 1993. She earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry, summa cum laude, at Princeton University in 1988 and her doctoral degree in chemistry at Stanford University in 1993.

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