Alexander Spokoyny is 2016’s 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award Recipient

Recognizing some of the brightest minds in both education and research, this year’s award goes to one of UCLA’s own.

The 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award has been a staple within the community. It encourages university professors to engage in pursuing new ideas and work with their peers in developing new educational structures and opportunities. The 3M Company awards this as part of their innovative research in higher education.

The 2016 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award

The 2016 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award has been given to Assistant Professor Alexander Spokoyny in recognition of his work on the development of new materials and synthetics methods that involve boron cluster compounds.

Professor Alexander Spokoyny

Spokoyny played a major role as a member of UCLA’s Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty. An undergrad at UCLA, Spokoyny was introduced to boron cluster chemistry in the laboratory of Professor M. Frederick Hawthorne. Upon his graduation, he continued his education at Northwestern University where he would develop new devices, materials, and platforms of organomimetic carborane clusters. He would then receive his Ph.D in inorganic chemistry in 2011, working in the laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before joining UCLA in 2014.

Steve Doctrow, EVP of Marketing at Rogers & Cowan, and Richard Davis, CFO of Rogers & Cowan, have worked with The 3M Company on various promotional marketing campaigns. Doctrow understands the importance of stimulating the brightest minds as it can positively impact the youth.

Recipients of the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award are chosen by 3M researchers. One of the reasons behind these awards is to help young faculty members achieve tenure while they conduct research and teach the youth. This tradition has continued for over 25 years.