Meet the ACS National Award winners for 2026: Part 3

Sponsor: Endowed fund established by Alfred R. Bader and Isabel BaderCitation: For the development of innovative inorganic chemical approaches to design functional protein assemblies and for groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of biological nitrogen fixationCurrent position: Professor of chemistry and biochemistry, University of California San DiegoEducation: BA, chemistry and biology, Macalester College; PhD, inorganic chemistry, California Institute of TechnologyTezcan on his hopes for the future: “My group would love to be able to expand the inorganic chemistry of proteins beyond what natural evolution and cellular chemistry have limited them to. It would also be nice to capture the structures of our favorite enzyme nitrogenase during catalysis and to outline the catalytic mechanism for nitrogen fixation in atomic detail.”What Tezcan's colleagues say: “Akif has pioneered studies in metalloprotein design and engineering, with an emphasis on new function. He has also charted deeply mechanistic work on light-driven nitrogenase function and provided the first cryo-electron microscopy study of a nitrogenase under turnover conditions, an approach set to define future structural maps of enigmatic enzymes.”—Jonas C. Peters, California Institute of TechnologySponsor: Gilead SciencesCitation: For pioneering the design, testing, and translation of small-molecule ligand-targeted drugs for the imaging and therapy of many human diseasesCurrent position: Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery and Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Purdue UniversityEducation: BS, chemistry, Brigham Young University; PhD, biochemistry, University of California, San DiegoLow on his hopes for the future: “We have recently developed more than 10 drug candidates for treatment of such diseases as macular degeneration,