Attendees at the 34th Triennial Convention, hosted by Aurum Iodide Chapter, Chicago, IL, June 2023
Congratulations to our newest chapter, Protactinium (Pa) in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania!
Read about it here
Dr. Marcy H. Towns,
Purdue University
2026 Honorary Member
Iota Sigma PI, the National Organization for Women in Chemistry, has selected Dr. Marcy H. Towns, Professor of Chemistry in the department of chemistry of Purdue University to receive the 2026 National Honorary Member Award. National Honorary Member is the highest award that Iota Sigma Pi bestows triennially on outstanding women chemists for their significant achievements in chemistry.
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Dr. Towns is an internationally recognized leading scholar in chemistry education research (CER) whose innovative studies have advanced how chemistry is taught, learned, and assessed.
Dr. Towns has made groundbreaking contributions to understanding student learning in chemistry laboratories, mathematical cognition in chemistry, and scientific argumentation in physical chemistry classrooms. Her work on digital badging for laboratory skills established a new framework for assessing and improving students’ hands-on competencies and has been adopted in universities in UK and Australia. Dr. Towns has also explored how students connect mathematical representations—such as equations, graphs, and symbolic notation, to physical and chemical concepts. Her investigations clarified how conceptual barriers emerge when students integrate mathematical reasoning with chemical principles. The award will be presented to Dr. Towns at the Iota Sigma Pi 2026 Triennial Convention in Costa Mesa, California in June 2026.
Dr. Teri W. Odom
Northwestern University
2026 Violet Diller Award
Iota Sigma PI, the National Organization for Women in Chemistry, has selected Dr. Teri W. Odom of Northwestern University as the recipient of the 2026 Violet Diller Award for Professional Excellence. The Violet Diller award is a triennial professional award and serves to recognize outstanding contributions to chemistry and allied fields by a woman.
​Dr. Teri W. Odom earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Harvard University. She is currently the Joan Husting Madden and William H. Madden, Jr. Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. Dr. Odom is internationally known for her pioneering contributions to nanoscience and nanophotonics. Her research focuses on designing structured nanoscale materials that exhibit tailored optical, physical, and chemical properties. She has developed multi-scale nanofabrication techniques that enable atomic-level tuning of nanoparticle size, shape, and arrangement, which in turn allow the controlled manipulation of light at the nanoscale. These advances have led to major developments in areas such as plasmonic nanoparticle lattices, lattice plasmon lasing, bioinspired photonic structures, and reconfigurable nanomaterials. Dr. Odom’s research advances fundamental knowledge and has a significant impact on applications such as sensing, photonics, catalysis, energy conversion, biomedical imaging, and others. The award will be presented to Dr. Odom at the Iota Sigma Pi 2026 Triennial Convention in Costa Mesa, California in June 2026.
CONTACT
IOTA SIGMA PI
The National Honor Society for Women in Chemistry
