UCLA Engineering Dean Alissa Park Receives ACS Garvan-Olin Medal Honoring Distinguished Leadership by Women Chemists and Chemical Engineers

Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received the 2026 Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society, which honors distinguished leadership in chemistry by women chemists and chemical engineers.

The award recognized Park for “inspiring and mentoring the next generation of chemists and chemical engineers to solve the world’s grand challenge of climate change through innovative chemistry.” The ACS presented Park with the medal on March 24 at its Spring 2026 conference in Atlanta, where she also delivered the keynote address at the Women Chemists Committee luncheon.

Park is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering with a joint appointment in civil and environmental engineering at UCLA Samueli. Her research focuses on sustainable energy and materials conversion pathways with an emphasis on integrated carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies.

She has received numerous professional honors, including the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award, the Engineers’ Council Distinguished Engineering Educator Award, the Shell Thomas Baron Award and the PSRI Lectureship Award — both from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Particle Technology Forum, the U.S. Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Initiative Research Award and the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award. She is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors.

Prior to joining UCLA in 2023, Park was the Lenfest Earth Institute Professor of Climate Change at Columbia University, where she also served as director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy.

Established in 1936, Past recipients of the Garvan-Olin Medal include Nobel laureates Frances Arnold, Gertrude Elion and Gerty Cori.