Election recognizes her work in theoretical quantum dynamics and quantum mechanical processes
Lois Yoksoulian, University of Illinois News Bureau
May 8, 2023

Nancy MakriChemistry professor Nancy Makri has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest professional honors a scientist can receive. She is among 120 members and 23 international members elected this year to recognize their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Makri is recognized for her work in theoretical quantum dynamics and numerical path integral simulations of quantum mechanical processes. She is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Chair, a professor in chemistry and physics, a member of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Institute and an affiliate of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. She has developed real-time path integral algorithms that address the computational limitations of the Schrödinger equation and is currently studying the effects of electron-vibration interaction on charge and energy transfer.

Makri is the recipient of many awards, including the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Sloan Research Fellowship, the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the Bodossaki Academic Prize in Physical Sciences, and the American Chemical Society Award in Theoretical Chemistry. She is a medalist and a member of the International Academy for Quantum Molecular Science, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Athens and a doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She spent two years as a junior fellow at Harvard before joining the faculty at Illinois in the spring of 1992. 

The complete list of individuals elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2023 is available online.

Read article: Successful summers in the lab
Successful summers in the lab
 It’s not easy for students to stay on campus during the summer to do research, but it can also be a prime opportunity for them to develop their interests. The 2025 Student Research Showcase, hosted in August by the Department of Chemistry,...
Read article: A growing look at the brain
A growing look at the brain
 A group of students with a shared passion for neuroscience are writing about it for the greater good—and they’re getting noticed.Brain Matters is a student-run neuroscience journal created in 2018 by student Thomas...
Read article: Crowdsourcing chemistry: Gift cards serve as incentive in Kaggle competition for data-driven discoveries
Crowdsourcing chemistry: Gift cards serve as incentive in Kaggle competition for data-driven discoveries
 Inspired by their own recent chemical discoveries for solar energy development using machine learning, a research team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was curious what other data-driven chemical discoveries could be possible if they could access a broader machine learning...