Paul S. Weiss, distinguished professor of chemistry & biochemistry and of materials science & engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, received his S.B. and S.M. degrees in chemistry from MIT in 1980 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. He was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1986-88 and a visiting scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center from 1988-89. He served as the director of the California NanoSystems Institute and held the Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences at UCLA from 2009-2014. Before coming to UCLA, he was a distinguished professor of chemistry and physics at the Pennsylvania State University, where he began his academic career in 1989.
Paul Weiss and his group are best known for elucidating the mechanisms of single-molecule function. To do so, they have developed the ability to pattern single molecules and chemical functionality with sub-Ångstrom precision simultaneously and hierarchically out to the centimeter scale, effectively adding the chemical dimension to lithography. They have simultaneously developed nanoscale analysis tools to measure structure, function, and spectra with submolecular resolution. These tools have enabled patterning down to the smallest scales while also enabling insight into and understanding of synthetic and biological assemblies.
During his five month visit, Professor Weiss will participate in the intellectual environment and give several guest lectures and seminars at the Kavli and Wyss Institutes at Harvard University.