Jonas Peters Elected to the American Philosophical Society

Jonas C. Peters, Bren Professor of Chemistry and director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute (RSI) at Caltech, has been elected one of 42 new members of the American Philosophical Society (APS) this year.

According to its press release, the APS "honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields spanning STEM and the humanities." Since its inception in 1743, the APS has welcomed 5,986 members including founders of the United States such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.

Peters' research is focused on chemical transformations relevant to feeding and fueling the planet. Specifically, his group works on the development of catalysts and photocatalysts with applications in renewable solar fuel technologies, distributed nitrogen fixation for fertilizers and fuels, and chemical transformations fundamental to the synthesis of organic molecules. At the core of his lab's work is the development of fundamentally new approaches to catalysis and elucidation of underlying reaction mechanisms, along with the characterization of reactive intermediates exhibiting unusual electronic structures and bonding. As director of the RSI, Peters leverages Caltech's unique strengths to innovate solutions for a more sustainable planet.

Peters received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1993, spent a year as a Marshall Scholar at the University of Nottingham, and then earned his doctorate at MIT in 1998. After completing a postdoc as a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, he joined the Caltech faculty in 1999. He became an associate professor in 2004, a professor in 2006, and following a brief period on the faculty at MIT, the Bren Professor of Chemistry in 2010. He served as the executive officer for chemistry from 2013 until 2015 and was named RSI director in 2015.

Peters has earned numerous awards and honors including the American Chemical Society (ACS) Inorganic Chemistry Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the ACS Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the National Fresenius Award. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.