New CCE Division Chair Announced

Sarah Reisman, Bren Professor of Chemistry and a leader in the area of natural product synthesis has been selected as the new chair of Caltech's Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (CCE). On July 1, she will begin a five-year term, taking over the Norman Davidson Leadership Chair from current division chair Dennis Dougherty, the George Grant Hoag Professor of Chemistry.

"We are delighted that Sarah has agreed to serve as chair," said David Tirrell, Caltech's provost, the Carl and Shirley Larson Provostial Chair, and the Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, in a written statement. "In her 16 years as a member of the Caltech faculty, Sarah has developed an outstanding research program in organic chemistry. … She is an accomplished teacher, winner of an ASCIT [Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology] Teaching Award, and a former executive officer for chemistry with a deep knowledge of the educational and research programs of the division."

Reisman earned her bachelor's degree at Connecticut College (2001), her doctoral degree from Yale University (2006), and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University before joining Caltech's faculty as an assistant professor in 2008. She became a full professor in 2014 and was named the Bren Professor in 2020. She served as the executive officer for chemistry from 2015 to 2021 and for the last five years has led the building committee for the new Resnick Sustainability Center (RSC) now nearing completion.

"It is an honor to serve as division chair and follow in the footsteps of our many remarkable past chairs," says Reisman. "I am looking forward to working with colleagues and staff in CCE and the Institute. Dennis Dougherty had the difficult job of steering the division through a global pandemic, and I am very grateful to Dennis for his service and his mentorship to me, personally."

Reisman says she is particularly excited about the opening of the RSC, planned for this fall. In addition to providing support facilities for research related to sustainability, the new building will also house new chemistry teaching laboratories that all Caltech undergraduate students will utilize. "It is an exciting opportunity for CCE to update our lab curricula," says Reisman, "and it will be an amazing space for our undergraduates to learn about chemistry."

Reisman also notes that she will be coming into her new role during a transitional period for the division, when many esteemed faculty members in chemistry and chemical engineering are retiring or starting to downsize their labs. "It will be important to hire and retain outstanding faculty members leading innovative research programs that span and connect biochemistry, chemistry, and chemical engineering," Reisman says. "Research in CCE strongly aligns with our campus initiatives in sustainability, quantum computing, translational medicine, and neuroscience, and I think there are exciting opportunities for CCE faculty to interface with initiatives in AI for science."