2016 AAAS Fellows

2016-11-21

Writer(s): Steve Scherer

Hilkka I. Kenttämaa, the Frank Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, and Fred E. Lytle, a retired Purdue Chemistry professor, have been elected Fellows of The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Dr. Kenttämaa is being recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of organic mass spectrometry, particularly for research on distonic radical cations and new ionization and structural characterization methods.

Dr. Kenttämaa came to Purdue in 1983 with funding from the Finnish Academy of Sciences and was hired by R. Graham Cooks as a postdoctoral fellow in 1986. She was an assistant research scientist here from 1987-1989 and joined the Chemistry faculty in 1989. This year Dr. Kenttämaa was named the Frank Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.

She has received several leadership and innovation awards at Purdue, was elected to the Finnish Academy of Sciences in 2004, and was nationally recognized with the 2015 Frank H. Field and Joe L. Franklin American Chemical Society Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry.

Dr. Lytle is being recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of analytical chemistry, particularly the use of picosecond lasers for time-resolved and two-photon excited molecular fluorescence.

Dr. Lytle was a member of the chemistry faculty for 40 years before retiring in 2008. While at Purdue, he received numerous teaching awards including 1996 Indiana Professor of the Year.

Nationally, he received the 1986 American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Chemical Instrumentation and the 1988 American Chemical Society Award in Analytical Chemistry.

Dr. Lytle lives in Indianapolis and works at Indigo BioAutomation, a laboratory automation and innovation company where he collaborates with CEO Randy Julian, a former Ph.D. student of R. Graham Cooks, and several other Purdue alums (some of whom took Lytle’s CHM 621 course while they were here in Chemistry.)

Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year 391 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Saturday, 18 February from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, Mass.