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Karena Chapman Receives Hanawalt Award for Research on Challenging Materials Problems

ChapmanProfessor Karena Chapman has received the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD) 2022 Hanawalt Awardfor her contributions in developing X-ray diffraction capabilities in the study of challenging materials problems in sustainable energy and environmental remediation.” 

Chapman is the Joseph Lauher and Frank W. Fowler Endowed Chair in Materials Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry at Stony Brook.

Her research explores the relationship between structure and reactivity in functional materials with a focus on energy applications. Chapman studies how a material’s function and limitations are governed by its chemistry and structure, from the atomic scale to the nanoscale, and beyond. She uses a variety of crystallographic characterization tools to directly probe structural transformation during reactions or operation, often exploiting large X-ray and neutron user facilities such as the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Ongoing projects focus on nanomaterials, energy-efficient catalysts, energy storage, host-guest interactions, and mechanical properties of porous framework and materials discovery and synthesis.

In 2016, Chapman was named Chemical & Engineering News’ Talented Twelve, and in 2015 she received the Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award. 

The Hanawalt Award is named in honor of J. Donald Hanawalt, whose pioneering work in the 1930s led to the development of the PDF database structure and search/match procedures still in use today. The award recognizes distinguished, recent work in the field of powder diffraction and is presented every three years.

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