ACS COMP Division recognizes 2026 award winners

The American Chemical Society Division of Computers in Chemistry (COMP) recognized their division award winners at both ACS Spring 2026 in Atlanta and most recently at ACS Fall in Chicago. These winners are recognized for excellence in computational approaches to chemistry.

Those recognized at ACS Fall 2026 are as follows:

The ACS OpenEye Cadence Molecular Sciences Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry was awarded to Henrik Larsson of the University of California, Merced; Joonho Lee of Harvard University; Zhou “Alice” Lin of the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Alice R. Walker of Wayne State University.

The Wiley Outstanding Postdoc Award was awarded to Jaehyeok Jin of Columbia University, under adviser David Reichman, and Paul Robinson of Harvard University, under adviser Joonho Lee.

The Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award for Graduate Students was awarded to Dongfang Cheng of the University of California, Los Angeles, with mentor Philippe Sautet; Minsik Cho of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with mentor Troy Van Voorhis; Jonathan Fajen of Stanford University, with mentor Todd Martínez; Sabari Kumar of Colorado State University, with mentor Seonah Kim; and Luxuan “Lulu” Wang of the University of Michigan, with mentor Terra Sztain.

Those recognized at ACS Spring 2026 are as follows:

The ACS OpenEye Cadence Molecular Sciences Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry was awarded to Sijia Dong of Northeastern University; Andrés Montoya-Castillo of the University of Colorado Boulder;  Wenji Dou of Westlake University; and Yang Yang of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The Wiley Outstanding Postdoc Award was awarded to Yunrui Qiu of the University of Maryland, College Park, under adviser Pratyush Tiwary, and Runzhong Wang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under adviser Connor Coley.

The Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award for Graduate Students was awarded to Xu Chen of Emory University, with mentor Fang Liu; Kenneth López-Pérez of the University of Florida, with mentor Ramon Miranda Quintana; Xinchun Ran of Vanderbilt University, with mentor Z. J. Yang; Lin Wang of Florida State University, with mentor Bin Ouyang; and Zhenling Wang of the University of California, Berkeley, with mentor Martin P. Head-Gordon.

More information about the division and the awards can be found online.

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