Sponsored by the University of Ottawa, Merck, the CSC Organic Chemistry Division
The Keith Fagnou Award is presented to a scientist residing in Canada who has made a distinguished contribution to organic chemistry while working in Canada. Eligible candidates must have received their Ph.D. no more than 12 years prior at the time of initial nomination.
View the Terms of Reference and list of Past Winners
The 2026 winner of the Keith Fagnou Award is:
Jolene Reid, MCIC
The University of British Columbia
Jolene was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. She is
now an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of British
Columbia, where she leads a research program at the interface of organic
synthesis, catalysis, and machine learning. Jolene earned her MSci in
Chemistry from Queen’s University Belfast in 2013 and completed her PhD
at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor
Jonathan Goodman in 2017. She then received a Marie Curie Postdoctoral
Fellowship to join Professor Matthew Sigman’s group at the University of
Utah. In 2020, she joined UBC as an Assistant Professor and was promoted
to Associate Professor with tenure in 2025.
Since launching her independent program in Canada, Jolene has published
research work spanning asymmetric catalysis, mechanistic analysis, and
machine learning for synthesis. Her group has developed impactful tools
for catalyst generality assessment, enantioselectivity prediction, and
data-guided synthetic planning—work that has been widely adopted by the
community.
Her contributions have been recognized by the CSC Keith Fagnou Award,
the Brian James International Symposium on Homogeneous Catalysis (ISHC)
Canada Award, the Amgen Young Investigator Award, and the Thieme
Chemistry Journals Award. She is also a Scialog Fellow in Automating
Chemical Laboratories and an active mentor and collaborator.