Professor Richard Kaner

2002 Faculty Prize Recipient

Image of Professor Richard Kaner

Professor Richard Kaner (best known as Ric) attended Brown University as an undergraduate, with graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his PhD. He was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley for two and a half years. Arriving at UCLA in 1987 as an Assistant Professor, he needed only six years to climb the ladder to become a full Professor in organic and materials chemistry in the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

In his own research, Ric works in three areas of inorganic and materials chemistry. To begin with, he discovered an amazing method to make high-temperature ceramics in a shorter than usual time, thus reducing the amount of external energy needed. His research group has produced more than100 different materials in this way. His results were highlighted in an invited feature article in Science and in another cover article in Chemistry of Materials.

His second field of “conjugated polymer membranes … for separating gases such as oxygen and nitrogen from air” has led to a couple of patents. These membranes are a new class of polymers of tremendous industrial importance. This research was described in a popular article in Scientific American.

Third, the Kaner group synthesized the first pure samples of fullerenes that are “doped” with small amounts of metals such as potassium. (Fullerenes are often called Buckminsterfullerenes or Buckyballs because of the geodesic-like structure of the molecules that resemble Buckminster Fuller’s domes). Kaner’s fullerenes are superconductors and were the subject of a cover article in Nature.

As evidence of his excellence in teaching, Professor Kaner is the recipient of the Chemistry Department Hanson-Dow Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Alumni Association Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award. Kaner’s research while at UCLA has produced more than one hundred publications, reaping many awards of high quality including the Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Glenn T. Seaborg Research Award. He travels widely, but his heart is never far from his wife and three small children. He can often be seen around campus as “Mr. Mom” with all his kids in tow.

As a Faculty Prize recipient, Ric Kaner designed and taught a special Faculty Prize course open to all undergraduates in the 2004 Spring quarter, entitled It’s a Material World.