Sponsored by the Canadian Council of University Chemistry Chairs (CCUCC)
The Clara Benson Award is presented to recognize a woman who has made a distinguished contribution to chemistry while working in Canada.
View the Terms of Reference and list of Past Winners
The 2024 winner of the Clara Benson Award is:
Jennifer Murphy, MCIC
University of Toronto
Jennifer Murphy was born in Montreal and grew up in Calgary. She received a BSc in Chemistry from McGill University (2000), a PhD in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley (2005), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 2006.
From 2007 – 2016, she held a Canada Research Chair in Atmospheric and Environmental Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Murphy was granted tenure in 2012 and promoted to full professor in 2017. She mentors a team of students and postdocs whose research focuses mainly on understanding the sources and sinks of reactive nitrogen in the atmosphere and on biosphere-atmosphere exchange. They deploy instruments at ground sites, on tall towers, stratospheric balloons, aircraft and ships to measure chemicals in the atmosphere.
She served as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of International Global Atmospheric Chemistry project from 2016 to 2020. In 2019, she was the recipient of an American Geophysical Union Ascent Award for mid-career excellence in atmospheric science. In 2020, she was a member of the team that won the Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Engineering.
Past Winners