2022-Gala Program Online Honoree -4.14.2022

HONOREE
KAREN I. GOLDBERG ’83, P’22, PhD
National Academy of Sciences
Karen Goldberg is the inaugural Vagelos Professor
of Energy Research in the Department of Chemistry
at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves
as director of the new Vagelos Institute of Energy
Science and Technology (VIEST), which focuses its
research efforts on alternative sources of energy
as well as energy use and storage. Prior to her
current appointment, she was a professor at the University of Washington,
where she was also director of the Center for Enabling New Technologies
through Catalysis (CENTC). She began her career at Illinois State University
after earning a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and
spending a postdoctoral year at The Ohio State University.
Professor Goldberg is known for developing new catalytic systems to
produce chemicals and fuels from a range of available feedstocks in a way
that is both efficient and environmentally responsible. She then aims to
improve these systems by testing and understanding the mechanisms by
which catalysts operate.
In 2018, Professor Goldberg was elected to the National Academy of
Sciences. She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and prizes,
including the International Precious Metal Institute’s Carol Tyler Award and
the American Chemical Society’s Award for Organometallic Chemistry. She
is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She has served on the advisory boards of several journals published by the
American Chemical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry, and she has
been a member of the Chemistry Selection Committee for Sloan Research
Fellowships and the International Advisory Committee of the Solvay Institutes.