A U of T chemistry professor has helped put Canadian universities on the map with his receipt of a prestigious science award.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation of New York awarded Dr. Gregory Scholes with a Sloan Fellowship for his work in chemistry. Scholes’ research and findings promise to “have a huge impact” on the electronics industry by making devices such as televisions and telephone lines smaller, lighter and more flexible.
Scholes, 36, earned a B.Sc. and Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne in Australia, his country of origin. He worked as a research associate at Imperial College in London, England, then as a postdoctoral research fellow at Berkeley. In July 2000 he began working for U of T as a physical chemist, specializing in photonics: the study of how materials respond to light.
Through intricate experiments involving lasers, Scholes looked at the fundamental reasons why materials that generate light or affect light work the way they do.
“What’s fascinating, I find, is the relationship between structures you can make and the properties we see them have in real life,” he said. “You have the control to be able to do that as a chemist.”
Sloan Fellowships are assigned annually in seven fields of science: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics. Although scientists from across North America are eligible for the award, the majority of the 116 winners come from highly regarded US universities including Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley. Scholes is one of only four researchers at a Canadian university to win the Sloan Fellowship in 2004.
“[The award] is good for the university and it’s a good sign that Canadian universities are competing with US universities,” Scholes said.
Scott A. Mabury, associate professor of environmental chemistry and chair of the department of chemistry at U of T, nominated Scholes for the Sloan Fellowship. Mabury foresees a great future for his colleague.
“He is an outstanding chemist,” Mabury said. “The work he’s doing now is going to have a huge impact on the world of science.”
In addition to the prestige associated with the fellowship, a designation Scholes will have for two years, he will also receive $40,000, to be used towards research-related activities, such as equipment and trainee support. Scholes says he has yet to think of a specific plan of how he will spend the money, but a large fraction will go towards enhancing current laser experiments.
“The money’s a nice bonus,” Scholes said. “What I’m most excited about is that this is the kind of award that puts you on the map in a sense.”
He hopes his work will induce technological advancements that will make our lives more convenient. Projects in progress include solar-cell type devices that work in very low light conditions, which Scholes believes could be put to use in refrigerators powered by small solar strips attached to food packaging. He admits that some of his ideas may seem far-fetched, but he explains that the inspiration for such an idea comes from nature.
“Nature already does this. It’s been done for a few million years by green sulphur bacteria,” Scholes said. “If nature does this, there’s no reason why we can’t do it.”
