Winners of 2025 Science History Institute Awards Announced

The Science History Institute is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Science History Institute Awards, given in recognition of exceptional achievements in chemistry, chemical engineering, life sciences, and allied fields and industries. An awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday, May 7 at the Institute in Old City Philadelphia.

Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Haas Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, will receive the Othmer Gold Medal, the Institute’s preeminent award. Named after noted chemical engineer and inventor Donald Othmer, this prestigious medal honors individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the material sciences. As a widely recognized leader in the field of analytical chemistry, Cooks was nominated for his contributions to such cross-disciplinary fields as cancer diagnostics, surface science, and mass spectrometry.

The Richard J. Bolte Sr. Award for Supporting Industries will be presented to Lita Nelsen, retired director of the Technology Licensing Office at MIT. The Bolte Award honors those who provide products or services vital to the continuing growth and development of the chemical and molecular sciences community. Nelsen, who now serves as a consultant, was chosen for her continued role as an internationally recognized authority in technology licensing and technology transfer.

Timothy Swager, MIT’s John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry, will be awarded the American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal, which recognizes extraordinary accomplishments in chemistry or chemical engineering in the United States. Swager is being honored for pioneering new chemical sensor concepts used in the security, health, safety, and food production, storage, and distribution fields.

“It is truly an honor to add these three remarkable individuals to our storied list of award winners,” said Institute president and CEO David Cole. “You could look at each of their biographies and be duly impressed by their trailblazing careers, but they’re also being recognized for their tireless efforts as mentors in academia, entrepreneurship, and volunteer work.”

About Graham Cooks

R. Graham Cooks is the recipient of the Science History Institute’s 2025 Othmer Gold Medal.

He joined the faculty at Purdue University in 1971 and is currently the Henry Bohn Haas Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, a post he has held since 1990. He is also codirector of Purdue’s Center for Analytical Instrumentation Development and the former director of the university’s Mass Spectrometry Center.

Cooks is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (2015), the National Academy of Inventors (2014), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010). He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Robert Boyle Medal (2009), the American Chemical Society’s Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research (2012), the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences (2013), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Mass Spectrometry & Advances in the Clinical Lab (2024).

With more than 1,700 published research articles, Cooks ranks among the 100 most cited chemists in the world. He has made significant contributions to surface science, cancer diagnostics, molecular homochirality, and chemical reactivity at interfaces through a series of key discoveries that have transformed mass spectrometry from an analytical to a synthetic method, and extended its impact in direct mixture analysis. The highly sought-after lecturer holds 176 U.S. patents and has trained more than 150 PhD graduates in chemistry.

Cooks received a BSc (1961), MSc (1963), and a PhD (1965) from the University of Natal in South Africa, and a second PhD from Cambridge University in 1967.

About Lita Nelsen

Lita Nelsen is the recipient of the Science History Institute’s 2025 Richard J. Bolte Sr. Award for Supporting Industries.

Nelsen’s trailblazing career includes 30 years at MIT’s Technology Licensing Office—25 of them as director—where she licensed more than 500 startup companies based on MIT research technology. During that time, she was also invited to lecture and consult on technology transfer and university-based entrepreneurship in over 20 countries around the world.

She is the author of many articles and book chapters on technology transfer, and is cofounder of Praxis (now Praxis-Auril), a U.K. nonprofit company that trains technology transfer professionals. In addition to being named a Member of the Order of the British Empire from the U.K. government, Nelsen has also received lifetime achievement awards from Xconomy and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.

Having retired from MIT in 2016, Nelsen now serves as a consultant for startups licensing technology from universities, an advisor to Good Growth Capital’s venture funds, and an advisory board member for several biotech companies. She also volunteers for the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, where she mentors student entrepreneurs.

Nelsen received a BS and an MS in chemical engineering from MIT, and an MBA as a Sloan Fellow from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to joining MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, she worked in R&D, consulting, and venture management in medical devices and membrane separations companies.

About Timothy Swager

Timothy M. Swager is the recipient of the Science History Institute’s 2025 AIC Gold Medal.

The Montana native, who is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at MIT, received a BS from Montana State University in 1983 and a PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1988. After a postdoctoral appointment at MIT, he served on the chemistry faculty at the University of Pennsylvania from 1990 to 1996. He returned to MIT in 1996 as a chemistry professor and served as the head of chemistry from 2005 to 2010.

Swager has published more than 550 peer-reviewed papers and holds more than 130 issued or pending patents. In addition to being an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors, he has also received the Linus Pauling Award (2016), the Lemelson-MIT Award for Invention and Innovation (2007), and the Christopher Columbus Foundation Homeland Security Award (2005). Honors from the American Chemical Society include the Carl S. Marvel Creative Polymer Chemistry Award (2005), the Award for Creative Invention (2013), the Polymer Chemistry Award (2019), and the Arthur C. Cope Award (2025).

Swager’s research interests focus on soft materials and polymers for the design, synthesis, and study of organic-electronic, sensory, energy harvesting, membrane, high-strength, liquid crystalline, and colloid materials. He is best known for the invention of the Fido explosives detector (now FLIR Systems), which is a hand-held sensory device that uses amplifying fluorescent polymers to detect trace levels of explosives, comparable to the sensitivity of a bomb-sniffing dog’s nose.

Other areas actively investigated by the Swager Group include radicals for dynamic nuclear polarization, applications of nano-carbon materials, organic photovoltaic materials, polymer actuators, separation membranes, and luminescent molecular probes for medical diagnostics. Swager is the cofounder of several companies, including DyNuPol, Iptyx, PolyJoule, C­2 Sense, ArO-X, MoxAir, and Xibus Systems, and has served on a number of corporate and government boards.

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Major funding for the Science History Institute Awards is provided by chief presenting sponsor the Bolte Family Foundation.