Chemistry Graduate Honored as a ‘Rising Star’

2001 Southwestern University graduate Megan Bourg Sassin has been selected to receive one of the first Rising Star Awards from the Women Chemists Committee of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Sassin will receive the award March 26 at the 243rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego. The meeting will include a symposium featuring the work of the award winners.

Sassin was selected to receive the award for her work as a research chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. The laboratory is the corporate research laboratory for the Navy and Marine Corps and conducts a broad program of scientific research. Sassin began working at the laboratory in 2008 as a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow after receiving her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California – Irvine. She has been a staff scientist in the NRL’s Surface Chemistry Branch since December 2010.

Sassin’s research at the NRL focuses on the design, fabrication and characterization of 3D nanostructured electrode architectures that improve the performance of electrochemical capacitors, lithium-ion batteries, metal–air batteries and fuel cells. This work has applications in a wide variety of areas, including consumer electronics, transportation, and energy generation and distribution.

Sassin’s research been published in journals such as the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Energy and Environmental Science, ACS Nano, Accounts of Chemical Research, and the Bulletin of the Materials Research Society. Sassin was nominated for the Rising Star Award by her section head at the Naval Research Laboratory, Dr. Debra Rolison. Rolison is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and received the organizations’s 2011 Award in the Chemistry of Materials.

The Rising Star awards were created in 2012 to recognize exceptional mid-career women chemists across all areas of chemistry on a national level. They also are intended to help promote retention of women in science. Sassin said she would not have been able to achieve what she has without the chemistry professors at Southwestern.

“The chemistry professors at Southwestern provided me with the knowledge, practical lab skills and communication skills that have enabled me to accomplish my goal of becoming a research chemist,” she said. “Their support while at Southwestern and throughout my graduate school experience was so valuable − it kept me going when times got rough.”

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