Chemistry professor honored with analytical chemistry lifetime achievement award
2025-02-22
Writer(s): Steve Scherer
R. Graham Cooks, the Henry B. Hass Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, has been named the 2025 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Analytical Chemistry Medal recipient.
The award honors lifetime achievement in research, active involvement in international partnerships, and a commitment to the training of the next generation of analytical chemists.
The IUPAC medal recognizes Cooks’ research in the field of mass spectrometry including fundamental phenomena, instrumentation and analytical applications, and his mentoring of 156 PhD graduate students, in addition to approximately 200 postdoctoral fellows and long-term scientific visitors.
During a 50-year career at Purdue, Cooks has authored more than 1000 scientific papers that have been cited more than 100,000 times with a 150 h-index. Technologies discovered in Cooks’ Aston Labs have generated more than 100 patents and the creation of five companies.
Cooks is affiliated with the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research, Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease (PI4D), Bindley Biosciences Center, and the Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery.
About Analytical Chemistry
Housed in the James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo Department of Chemistry in the College of Science, Purdue University’s analytical chemistry program continues to be ranked No. 1 in the latest U.S. News & World Report graduate program survey. The Purdue program also remains one of the world’s largest, with 16 faculty members and more than 100 graduate students.
About Purdue Chemistry
The Tarpo Department of Chemistry is internationally acclaimed for its excellence in chemical education and innovation, boasting two Nobel laureates in organic chemistry, the #1 ranked analytical chemistry program, and a highly successful drug discovery initiative that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives/.