Dr. Geoffrey W. Coates

Geoffrey W. Coates is a University Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. He received a B.A. degree in Chemistry from Wabash College in 1989 and a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1994. His thesis work, under the direction of Robert M. Waymouth, investigated the stereoselectivity of metallocene-based Ziegler-Natta catalysts. Following his doctoral studies, he was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow with Robert H. Grubbs at the California Institute of Technology. During the summer of 1997 he joined the faculty of Cornell University as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2001, and to Professor in 2002. He was appointed to the first Tisch University Professorship at Cornell in 2008. The research focus of the Coates Group is the development of new catalysts for the synthesis of polymers as well as small molecules. Professor Coates' research concentrates on developing new methods for reacting commodity feedstocks in unprecedented ways, and focuses on developing polymers that are environmentally benign. He has coauthored over 230 peer-reviewed papers that have been cited more than 28,000 times, and has delivered more than 420 invited lectures. Professor Coates has been awarded several ACS national awards, including the A. C. Cope Scholar Award (2001), the Award in Affordable Green Chemistry (2009), the Hach Award For Entrepreneurial Success (2016), and the Applied Polymer Science Award (2015). In 2011 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. He is the scientific cofounder of Novomer, Ecolectro, and Intermix Performance Materials, and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.