Elimelech Wins 2012 Yale University Postdoctoral Mentoring Prize

Menachem Elimelech, the Roberto C. Goizueta Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, has been awarded the 2012 Yale University Postdoctoral Mentoring Prize.

Candidates for the prize, awarded annually to the Yale faculty member who is judged to best exemplify the role of a mentor to his or her postdoctoral trainees, are nominated by the postdoctoral fellows and associates themselves. Elimelech was recognized for having a contagious excitement about science, for helping postdoctoral trainees to build professional networks both within the Yale community and beyond, and for helping postdocs to situate their work in questions of larger scientific interest.

Among the 20 postdocs Elimelech has advised, 18 currently hold academic positions at major research universities, including Harvard, the University of Illinois, Rice, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Maryland, and the University of Notre Dame.

The accolades from Elimelech’s current postdocs came as no surprise to School of Engineering & Applied Science Dean T. Kyle Vanderlick.

“I have not met any faculty member who has invested as much time in mentoring at all levels - from undergraduate students, to graduate students, to postdoctoral fellows, and to junior faculty,” says Vanderlick. “He is a mentor of mentors.”

Elimelech, who has previously been honored at Yale with the Liza Cariaga-Lo Faculty Award for Diversity in Scholarship and Service and the Yale Graduate Mentor Award, will accept the Postdoctoral Mentoring Prize at the Responsible Conduct of Research lecture on May 30.