Sponsored by the CIC Materials Chemistry Division
The Award for Research Excellence in Materials Chemistry is presented to a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant who has made an outstanding contribution to materials chemistry while working in Canada.
View the Terms of Reference and list of Past Winners
The 2026 winner of the Award for Research Excellence in Materials Chemistry is:
Zachary Hudson
The University of British Columbia
Zac Hudson completed his B.Sc. at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He remained at Queen’s to pursue a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry with Prof. Suning Wang, also holding graduate fellowships at Jilin University in China and Nagoya University in Japan. He then moved to the University of Bristol as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Ian Manners, followed by a second Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara with Prof. Craig Hawker. He joined the faculty at UBC in 2015, where he is now a Full Professor. His research program develops luminescent materials for optoelectronics, bioimaging, and photocatalysis. He designs materials with advanced optical properties, such as nanoparticles with ultrahigh brightness, materials for visible-light photocatalysis, and new compounds with unusual electronic structures. He has been recognized for his work with the Killam Teaching Prize, the Killam Mentorship Award, and the Charles McDowell Medal as UBC’s top early-career researcher in science and engineering.