Chemistry professor Xiao Cheng Zeng has been selected for an honor recognizing outstanding achievements in chemistry.
Zeng, Ameritas Distinguished University Professor of chemistry, has been named the 2011 recipient of the Midwest Award from the American Chemical Society's St. Louis section. The honor, given annually, recognizes a scientist who has made "meritorious contributions to the advancement of pure or applied chemistry, chemical education, and the profession of chemistry."
Zeng is internationally known for his computational studies of new phases of ice, gold, and silicon clusters, and nanostructured materials. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society.
He has received numerous awards and honors over the years, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a University of Nebraska Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award.
Zeng's work also has been published in numerous major scientific journals and featured in mainstream media.
Zeng, who joined the UNL faculty in 1993, received his bachelor's degree from Peking University in 1984 and his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 1989. He pursued postdoctoral research at University of Chicago and UCLA from 1989 to 1993.
He will receive his award in October during a banquet at the Midwest Regional ACS meeting.
Zeng is the fourth chemist from UNL to receive the award since it was established in 1944. Reuben Rieke received the honor in 1997, and Norman Cromwell and Cliff Hamilton also were recipients in 1984 and 1955, respectively.
— Jean Ortiz Jones, University Communications