Tom Miller Wins Teacher-Scholar Award

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation has recognized Thomas F. Miller, professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), with a 2013 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

The award provides a $75,000 unrestricted research grant to "support the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences," according to the foundation.

"I am very grateful to my colleagues in the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Division here at Caltech for nominating me for this award," Miller says. "I am also thankful to the Dreyfus Foundation for its generous grant, which will greatly benefit my research efforts."

Miller is an expert in developing theoretical and computational methods to understand a variety of molecular processes including enzyme catalysis, solar energy conversion, dendrite formation in lithium batteries, and the transport of proteins across cell membranes.

The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards program is open to institutions in the United States that offer a bachelor's degree or higher in the chemical sciences, biochemistry, materials chemistry, and chemical engineering. Academic institutions may nominate one researcher per year for the award.

Miller earned a bachelor of science degree from Texas A&M University in 2000 and a PhD at the University of Oxford in 2005. He became an assistant professor at Caltech in 2008 and in 2013 was named professor of chemistry. He is the recipient of a Dreyfus New Faculty Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, American Chemical Society Hewlett-Packard Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, and an Associated Students of Caltech Teaching Award.