Chemistry Assistant Professor Awarded UTEP’s First Sloan Research Fellowship
Last Updated on February 15, 2018 at 3:00 PM
Originally published February 15, 2018
By Pablo Villa
UTEP Communications
Skye Fortier, Ph.D., was working with a student in late January 2018 when the sharp chirp of his cell phone interrupted their discussion.
The assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Texas at El Paso answered the call. The voice on the other end was Keith Pannell, Ph.D., a fellow chemistry professor. Pannell inquired if his colleague had checked his email recently. Fortier immediately became dismayed.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh, this is the email to say that I didn’t receive the award,’” Fortier said.
The award in question was the Sloan Research Fellowship. Fortier was nominated by Pannell for the top prize of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a highly regarded honor that recognizes early-career scholars whose achievements mark them as the next generation of scientific leaders.
Soon enough Fortier learned he was indeed one of the nonprofit’s honorees for 2018.
“He proceeded to read the email to me,” Fortier said. “It was a big shock. After I finished on the phone, I had to check and make sure that I actually did receive that email, that it was real. It was a fantastic feeling.”
Fortier is the first UTEP faculty member to be named a Sloan Research Fellow. The list of 126 Sloan Research Fellows was announced Thursday, Feb. 15, with a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. Fortier will receive $65,000 to further his research in synthetic and organic chemistry.
“Being named a Sloan Research Fellow is a tremendous honor,” said Robert Kirken, Ph.D., dean of the College of Science. “For Dr. Fortier, this is a testament to his capabilities as a scientist. This award means his work has stood out from among the top researchers in the country. The Sloan Foundation considers him to have the potential to become the next great leader in his field. That is exciting news for him and an amazing opportunity for UTEP.”
The Sloan fellowship is open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields – chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists, and winning fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars on the basis of each candidate’s independent research accomplishments, creativity and future potential.
Fortier was nominated for the prize by Pannell, his colleague in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry who was once his research mentor. Fortier worked in Pannell’s laboratory when he was an undergraduate student at UTEP in the early 2000s. Pannell said he knew early on that Fortier would one day showcase his talents in a big way.
“It was clear to me from the first time I met him that he was an energetic young man,” Pannell said. “Skye was someone who could work, think and live inside the box as well as outside the box. That sort of creativity is rare. It is absolutely beautiful to see his success come to fruition.”
Fortier said the money he will receive as a Sloan recipient will facilitate the research activities he is conducting to make metal-containing compounds. Fortier said he hopes to develop methods to create organo-metal molecules for new types of chemical reactions and new, low-cost, easy-to-manage catalysts that can be applied to various facets of science. He said the inspiration to use metals comes from nature.
“It’s actually something that nature has been doing for a really long time,” Fortier said. “If we look at our blood, hemoglobin has iron in it. If we look at our livers, we have an enzyme that contains iron that helps us metabolize a lot of drugs and chemicals. So, taking inspiration from nature, we, too, try to make metal-centered molecules to do remarkable and unusual things with them.”
Fortier added that the recognition would not have been possible if not for his student researchers.
“Even though this is the research program that I developed, none of it would ever be executed without the students that are in my laboratory,” Fortier said. “We, of course, have great faculty, but we also have phenomenal students. They’re the ones executing this research, they’re the ones doing the hard work. Together I think we make a really powerful team.”