Neil Garg, UCLA’s Kenneth N. Trueblood Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been selected to receive the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry’s 2019 Edward Leete Award for outstanding contributions to teaching and research in organic chemistry. He will be presented the award at the ACS national meeting in San Diego in August.
Among Garg’s many awards and honors, he is the 2018 recipient of the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching. This award is given once every two years by Baylor University, to an extraordinary professor who is an inspiring teacher with a positive, long-lasting effect on students and a record of distinguished scholarship.
Garg has been getting large numbers of UCLA students to love organic chemistry for years, and has won many awards for his teaching and research. He was selected as a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society in 2018.
Garg, who is chair of UCLA’s department of chemistry and biochemistry, created interactive online tutorials, called BACON, that combine real-life examples of organic chemistry, human health and popular culture. He and his two daughters, Elaina, and Kaylie, published the Organic Coloring Book in 2017 to help children learn the wonders of organic chemistry.
In his award-winning research, Garg develops new chemical transformations that enable the synthesis of important organic molecules.
Garg shared his inspiring teaching secrets in this 20-minute TEDxUCLA talk.