- Source: Ayusman Sen
Ayusman Sen is the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Chemistry, with appointments at the Departments of Chemical Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He received a $25,000 award in 1984 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Early life and education
Sen was born in Calcutta, India. He received his B.Sc from University of Calcutta after which he obtained his M.Sc from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1978 under the direction of Jack Halpern followed by a year of postdoctoral research with John E.Bercaw at the California Institute of Technology.
Career
He joined the faculty at the Penn State in 1979, where he served as the Head of the Chemistry Department from 2004-2009. Sen was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005 and the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2015.
His research interests during his career have encompassed catalysis, polymer science, active autonomous systems, synthetic nanomotors and micromotors, micropumps, nanotechnology and systems chemistry.
Prof. Sen is also Adjunct Professor at the International Centre for Materials Science, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. He was the Iberdrola Visiting Professor at the University of Valladolid, the Coochbehar Professor at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, and Distinguished Scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science. Sen serves on the scientific advisory boards of the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.
He has explained what he calls his own "irrational interest" in science with a quote from Henry Moore: "The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do."
He has published more than 420 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals with an h-index of 103 and holds 25 patents.
Selected Honors and Awards
1982 - 84 Young Investigator Award, Chevron Research Company
1984 - 88 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow
1987 - 88 Paul J. Flory Award, IBM
2003 Faculty Scholar Medal, Pennsylvania State University
2005 Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
2011 Medal, Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI)
2013 Member, Scientific Advisory Board, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany
2015 Elected Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry
2019 Langmuir Lecture Award, American Chemical Society
2019 Humboldt Prize, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation