Chemistry's Tim Kowalczyk named a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar for 2023-24

WWU Associate Professor of Chemistry Tim Kowalczyk has received one of only eight 2023-24 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar awards awarded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation for 2023-24.

Each year, the foundation honors young faculty in the chemical sciences with outstanding bodies of scholarship and a deep commitment to undergraduate education. Each scholar is awarded a $75,000 unrestricted research grant.  

The Dreyfus Foundation grant funded undergraduate research on Kowalczyk’s project, “Excited-State Electronic Structure Driven Design of Photoactive Organic Materials.” Two undergraduate students worked on the project over the summer, and the grant will support up to two undergraduate student summer researchers until 2028. Kowalczyk’s research group is interdisciplinary and regularly includes students majoring or minoring in chemistry, energy studies, material science, physics, mathematics, engineering and computer science. 

“My experience working with Tim and the Kowalczyk Group was as fascinating as it was challenging,” said Anders Johnson, who completed an independent study research project with Kowalczyk on the light-absorbing ability of organic materials. “As an engineering student, I had very limited experience with physical chemistry and even less with computational chemistry. Tim’s willingness to teach some of the basics and provide a platform to extend my learning really stood out.” 

Johnson was able to present his work within the Kowalczyk group at the Puget Sound Section of the American Chemical Society’s undergraduate research symposium, and as a part of Western’s Scholars Week.  

“These opportunities are important skill-building experiences and are a great chance to learn from peers,” Johnson said. “Working in Tim’s lab also provided me with the interdisciplinary experience I’m looking for in my undergraduate degree. My interests lie somewhere between a few departments and programs here on campus, and the ability to experience many of these interests is very valuable to me.” 

Kowalczyk’s research focuses on understanding how certain organic molecules convert energy, in an effort to research more sustainable energy sources. 

“The bird's-eye-view goals of the research we're pursuing through this award are to clarify how it is that certain organic molecules pull off apparent ‘magic tricks’ in converting energy from light to electricity and heat,” Kowalczyk said. “By better understanding what the electrons are doing to let these organic materials work their magic, we can design them more deliberately and push them to their limits.” 

Better understanding how heat and electricity is converted from light could drive down the cost for solar cells and sustainable fuels, Kowalczyk said.  

The students co-designed, ran and interpretated simulations of how electrons within the organic materials respond to light absorption as part of their research. 

In order to be eligible for the Henry Dreyfus award, faculty must have an independent academic career for more than four years but no more than twelve, work within an institution that does not grant doctoral degrees, and study within the chemical sciences.  Chemical sciences include chemistry, biochemistry, materials chemistry and chemical engineering. Western has the second highest number of Henry Dreyfus teacher-scholars in the nation, with nine awardees within the chemistry department since the award's creation in 1994. 

“We chose Tim for this nomination because he has an exemplary track record with conducting transformative research with both undergraduate and graduate students here at WWU,” said WWU Professor of Chemistry Clint Spiegel, who served as chemistry’s chair at the time of Kowalczyk’s nomination. “He has also been at the forefront of practicing innovative, student-centered approaches to teaching in the classroom. This award reflects the quality and breadth of Tim’s work because he has been deeply committed to his research efforts in computational approaches to studying energy processes while also engaging students to produce these results.” 

Kowalczyk joined Western in 2014 after finishing his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 and serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Nagoya University in Japan. He previously received a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation in 2019, which is awarded to early-career faculty who serve as academic role models in research and education. 

“This award also reinforces for me how much I value being a faculty member in a college with a highly active and distinguished science education program (SMATE),” Kowalczyk said about winning the Dreyfus. “SMATE’s success fosters an appetite for evidence-based instructional innovation across CSE, making it a supportive home for my curricular efforts in the chemistry and energy programs.” 

To learn more about the Kowalczyk group and its research, visit https://chemistry.wwu.edu.