Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of the Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, has received the 2026 Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society. The award recognizes distinguished leadership in chemistry by women chemists and chemical engineers.
Dr. Park is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering with a joint appointment in civil and environmental engineering. Throughout her career, she has conducted extensive research on sustainable energy and materials conversion pathways with an emphasis on integrated carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies. At UCLA, her research group investigates direct air capture of carbon dioxide and negative emission technologies.
Before joining the UCLA faculty in 2023, Dr. Park spent 16 years on the faculty at Columbia University in New York City, where she ultimately served as the Lenfest Earth Institute Professor of Climate Change, director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, and chair of the department of earth and environmental engineering.
Outside of academia, Dr. Park collaborates with UN Women on a project supporting entrepreneurship in sustainable energy in developing countries. She is also the co-founder of GreenOre CleanTech, a startup that transforms the hard-to-decarbonize industrial sector’s solid wastes and carbon emissions into value-added products, such as carbon-negative building materials, while recovering energy-relevant critical minerals.
A native of Seoul, South Korea, Dr. Park earned her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in chemical and biological engineering from the University of British Columbia in Canada. She received her Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Ohio State University.