Faculty Honor: Professor Dan Weix Wins Herbert C. Brown Award
Congratulations to Professor Dan Weix, who has been named the recipient of the 2027 Herbert C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods, one of the American Chemical Society’s National Awards. The honor, supported by an endowed fund established by the Purdue Borane Research Fund and others, recognizes outstanding and creative contributions to the discovery and development of novel, useful methods for chemical synthesis — placing Weix among a distinguished lineage of chemists working at the cutting edge of synthetic methodology.
Weix joined the UW–Madison Department of Chemistry in 2017 and now holds the Wayland E. Noland Distinguished Professorship. His research centers on cross-electrophile coupling, a strategy for forming carbon-carbon bonds that sidesteps the need for the reactive, often difficult-to-handle carbon nucleophiles required by traditional coupling methods. By developing ways to join two different carbon electrophiles directly using metal catalysts, the Weix Group has opened up more practical, efficient routes to building complex molecules — work with direct relevance to pharmaceutical development, where the ability to reliably construct new compounds is essential to discovering effective drugs.
The Herbert C. Brown Award adds to a growing list of honors for Weix, including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and the department’s own Kellett Mid-Career Award. The Department of Chemistry congratulates Professor Weix on this well-deserved national recognition of his contributions to synthetic chemistry.