The recipient of the 2021 Young Alumni Award is Wesley S. Farrell. Wes
graduated from Wake Forest in 2010 receiving a BS with Honors in Chemistry. He
did research with Dr. Akbar Salam complementing some of Dr. Bierbach’s group’s
work with platinum acridine materials.
Wes went to Maryland for his PhD and became an excellent organometallic
chemist under the direction of Professor Lawrence Seeta. From there he went to
NIST for post-doc where he learned some additional polymer chemistry under the
supervision of Kathryn Beers.
Since 2018, Wes has been on the Chemistry faculty at the US Naval Academy
where he teaches Inorganic Chemistry Lab as well as the Naval Academy’s
version of General Chemistry called “Plebe Chemistry.” He is also establishing an
impressive research program there in olefin metathesis catalysis.
Wes has also been heavily engaged in service to the broader Chemistry
community. He serves committees in IUPAC as well as the ACS. He has been
especially active in the ACS program for Economically Disadvantaged students
called Project SEED. Since 2016 he has been engaged with Project SEED from the
volunteer level to the Advisor and Coordinator levels.
His department head at the Naval Academy, Joseph Urban complemented Wes in
saying, that he “provides a tremendous example of the Wake Forest moto Pro
Humanitate… His commitment to service is one of the factors that made it
evident to my department…that he would be an outstanding addition to our
USNA faculty.”
We are very proud to be able to announce Wes as the recipient of the 2021 Wake
Forest Chemistry Young Alumni Award.