Young-Shin Jun Selected as Recipient of the 2026 ACS Midwest Award

Dr Young-Shin Jun, the Anna McKelvey Professor of McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University, has been named the winner of the 2026 ACS Midwest Award. The award will be presented at the Midwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society on Monday, October 26th. The regional meeting is hosted this year by Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS.

Since 2008, Dr Jun has been a Professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at Washington University. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ewha Womans University (Seoul, South Korea), holds master’s and PhD degrees at Harvard University, and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California–Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr Jun advances the understanding of nanoscale interfacial chemistry and solid nucleation to tackle key challenges in energy and the environment. She currently focuses on three critical areas: CO₂-energy-chemical systems; novel technologies to recover critical elements, nutrients, and valuable salts from unconventional resources; and nanomaterials synthesis and nanotechnologies for improving the quality of water and soil. Dr Jun’s scholarly impact is demonstrated by 160 peer-reviewed publications, four granted patents and five pending patents.

Professor Jun has received numerous awards, including the 2008 Ralph E Powe Junior Faculty Award, the 2011 U.S. NSF CAREER award, the 2020 James Lee Award, the 2022 Jackson Award, an IUPAC 2025 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award, and the 2026 Engineer of the Year Award by the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA) and the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (KOFST). She was named a 2015 Kavli Fellow by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a 2016 Frontier of Engineering Fellow by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a 2018 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a 2019 Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS), and a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

She is the Chair of the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Science (COMSCI) and an Alternate Councilor of the ACS Environmental Chemistry Division. She was the 2015 Program Chair and the 2016 Division Chair of the ACS Geochemistry Division. As Chair of COMSCI, she has led the development and implementation of a new ACS meeting platform, Innovative Programming, which fosters collaboration on frontier research topics among technical divisions and committees, government organizations, academia, and industry. Professor Jun is an Editorial Board Member of ACS ES&T: Engineering, RSC Advances, and Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering.

Since 2008, she has advised 119 research trainees and has supported K–12 STEM education through a variety of outreach programs, benefiting students and teachers throughout the Saint Louis region.