PAUL S. WEISS, PHD
Northwestern University
University of California, Los Angeles
2024 William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement
Biography
Paul S. Weiss is a pioneering nanoscientist who studies the ultimate limits of miniaturization, exploring the atomic-scale chemical, physical, optical, mechanical, electronic, thermal, and spin properties of surfaces, interfaces, supramolecular, and biomolecular assemblies. He has developed and applied atomic-resolution scanning tunneling microscopes and spectroscopic imaging methods to measure the structure, function, and spectra of the smallest switches and motors in the world. To do so, he and his group also developed chemical patterning methods to place molecules and to control intermolecular interactions from the sub-Ångstrom to the centimeter scales. He applies these advances in many areas including quantum biology, quantum information, sensing, neuroscience, microbiome studies, tissue engineering, cellular therapies, and high-throughput gene editing.
Weiss has won awards in science, engineering, teaching, publishing, and communications, including the IEEE Nanotechnology Pioneer Award and Guggenheim and Sloan Fellowships. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the leading nanoscience journal ACS Nano. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, American Physical Society, American Vacuum Society, Canadian Academy of Engineering, Chemical Research Society of India, Chinese Chemical Society, IEEE, Materials Research Society, and National Academy of Inventors.
He holds a UC Presidential Chair and is a distinguished professor of chemistry & biochemistry, bioengineering, and materials science & engineering at UCLA. He previously served as the director of the California NanoSystems Institute and held the Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences at UCLA. He received his SB and SM degrees in chemistry from MIT and PhD from UC Berkeley. He continued his training at Bell Labs and IBM Almaden. Before coming to UCLA, he was a distinguished professor of chemistry and physics at the Pennsylvania State University, where he began his academic career as an assistant professor. He holds visiting appointments at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and universities in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, and South Korea. He is a serial entrepreneur and a vocal advocate for nanoscience, frequently giving public lectures and consulting on television shows, movies, and games.