Sponsored by Rio Tinto
The Rio Tinto Award is presented to a scientist who has made a distinguished contribution to the fields of inorganic chemistry or electrochemistry while working in Canada.
View the Terms of Reference and list of Past Winners
The 2024 winner of the Rio Tinto Award is:
Daniel B. Leznoff, FCIC
Simon Fraser University
Daniel Leznoff (FCIC) received his B.Sc. from York University, concurrently studying Japanese; he spent a year on exchange at Meiji University in Tokyo and won several Canadian National Japanese speech competitions. He completed his Ph.D. at UBC in 1997 as an NSERC 1967 Scholar with Prof. Michael Fryzuk and then was an NSERC Post-doctoral Fellow at CNRS Bordeaux with Prof. Olivier Kahn. He joined Simon Fraser University in 1999, and has been Professor of Chemistry since 2009.
Dr. Leznoff has published widely in the area of cyanometallate coordination polymers for materials applications with a particular focus on metallophilic platinum and gold-based systems; he also has made substantial research contributions in metallophthalocyanines, paramagnetic organometallic and actinide chemistry. He holds patents for extremely sensitive ammonia and other toxic gas sensors and birefringent coordination polymer optical materials. In recognition, he was awarded the Strem Chemicals Award for Pure and Applied Inorganic Chemistry in 2010, was a JSPS Invitation Fellow at Kyushu University (2007), and an Invited Visiting Professor in Strasbourg (2015) and Lyon (2019). He has won multiple SFU Teaching Excellence Awards. He also co-organized over 10 conferences, including acting as Scientific Program Chair for CSC 2014 in Vancouver, and serves on the Editorial Board of Can. J. Chem. His wonderful wife and daughters tolerate his unending fascination and enthusiasm for chemistry.