Women’s Contribution to F-element Science

Jean-Claude Bünzli (he/him) is an Honorary Professor emeritus at the EPFL where he founded the Laboratory of Lanthanide Supramolecular Chemistry He earned a degree in chemical engineering in 1968 and a PhD in 1971 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). After two years at the University of British Columbia as a teaching postdoctoral fellow (photoelectron spectroscopy) and one year at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (physical organic chemistry) he was appointed in 1974 as assistant-professor at the University of Lausanne. He launched a research program on the coordination and spectroscopic properties of f-elements and was promoted to full professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry in 1980. During 2009-2013 he was also a World Class University professor at Korea University (South Korea) at the WCU Center for Next Generation Photovoltaic Devices. In 2016, he has been appointed as adjunct professor at the Haimen Institute of Science and Technology (Haimen, Jiangsu, P.R. China) which is a satellite campus of Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests deal with various aspects of luminescent lanthanide coordination and supramolecular compounds, developing luminescent bioprobes and bioconjugates for the detection of cancerous cells with time-resolved microscopy as well as luminescent materials for various photonic applications, including solar energy conversion. In 1989, he founded the European Rare Earths and Actinide Society which coordinates international conferences in the field and for which he is presently acting as president. Susan Kauzlarich (she/her) is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California Davis. She received her BS degree in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary and her PhD from Michigan State University. After a postdoctoral research position with John Corbett at Iowa State University, she joined the University of California Davis faculty. She is a world-renowned expert on Zintl phases and the synthesis and characterization of nano-materials, with interests ranging from solar photovoltaics to thermoelectrics and quantum materials. She pioneered the inclusion of rare earth and transition metal analogs of Zintl phases. Prof. Kauzlarich is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society. She received the Mayer Distinguished Scholar Award from Argonne National Laboratory, the Francis P. Gavan – John M. Olin Medal, and the American Chemical Society 2022 Inorganic Chemistry Award. She received a NASA Tech Brief Award for her work on thermoelectric power generation. She has been very active in service to the profession: she currently serves as a Deputy Editor for Science Advances after 15 years as an Associate Editor for Chemistry of Materials. She has been recognized for her outstanding mentoring of STEM students, including a U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math, and Engineering Mentoring (2008).