Stoltz Wins Grant from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation

Professor of Chemistry Brian Stoltz has been awarded a $120,000 grant from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation's Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry. The grant, distributed over two years, provides funds for a principal investigator to appoint a postdoctoral fellow to work on "innovative fundamental research in the chemical sciences or engineering related to the environment."

Stoltz's lab focuses on using chemical synthesis to develop new reactions and strategies for manufacturing complex molecules. In collaboration with the laboratories of Paul Wennberg, the R. Stanton Avery Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering, and Mitchio Okumura, professor of chemical physics, Stoltz's group will use the Dreyfus Foundation grant to fund a postdoctoral scholar and an interdisciplinary project that merges the fields of synthetic, organic, and environmental reaction chemistry.

"We plan to employ organic synthesis as a tool to help address unresolved questions that have eluded traditional methods of experimental atmospheric chemistry, including the identification of oxidation mechanisms that lead to the formation of organic particulate matter and to the regeneration of atmospheric oxidant radicals," says Stoltz. "In the process, we hope to educate a postdoctoral scholar and expose them to a broad range of scientific disciplines and skills by applying techniques from synthetic and atmospheric chemistry in an interdisciplinary setting."

Fourteen other Caltech professors have received this grant since its inception in 1996.