Joseph Francisco Receives Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award

Joseph S. Francisco, President’s Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and Professor of Chemistry, has received the 2025 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award from the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Society. Francisco was selected in recognition of his long-term work in applied spectroscopy. His research focuses on atmospheric chemistry, using tools from experimental physical and theoretical chemistry to advance our understanding of chemistry in the atmosphere at the molecular level.
 
The Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering science education locally and nationally. The award will be presented next March during Pittcon 2025 in Boston. Previous awardees have included Robin M. Hochstrasser, who taught in Penn’s Department of Chemistry for 50 years, and Ahmed Zewail, Hochstrasser’s student who earned a PhD from Penn and later, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
 
Francisco has received numerous honors and awards including the 2023 Theodore William Richards Medal, the 2022 Willard Gibbs Award from the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society, the Philadelphia Section Award of the American Chemical Society, and the Centenary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry (London). He was appointed a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2022-2023 and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

(Image: Shira Yudkoff)