2026 Herman Pines Award

The 2026 Herman Pines Award Recognizes the Contributions of Dr. Shashank Shekhar to the Catalysis Community!

Herman Pines was an outstanding research scientist in both industry and academia, and his work revolutionized the general understanding of organic chemistry, particularly the chemistry of hydrocarbons interacting with strong acids. The Award in his honor is co-sponsored by UOP, where Herman Pines began his industrial career in 1930 and amassed 145 US patents, and by the Catalysis Club of Chicago, of which Herman Pines was a founding member while at Northwestern University.
 
Dr. Shashank Shekhar is a Senior Research Fellow at AbbVie and is the head of the Center of Catalysis. His group develops chemical and biochemical catalytic processes to meet the needs of Discovery and Process Chemistry. He has developed the synthesis of biarylphosphorinane ligands and has demonstrated their application in Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions on milligram to multi-kilogram scale. He has developed copper- and nickel-catalyzed cross-coupling methods for industrial applications. He has also developed Ir-catalyzed C-H borylation and Rh-catalyzed cyclopropanation methods of relevance to the pharmaceutical industry. Shashank has helped develop capabilities to conduct high-throughput experimentation, high-pressure, photo-, and electro-chemical reactions at AbbVie. He is helping integrate AI/ML tools for reaction optimization and reaction condition prediction. Shashank is a well-recognized process chemist, technology lead and mentor. He has established multiple research collaborations with Universities, has authored >75 manuscripts, patents, book chapters and presentations, has served as the Topic Editor for ACS Catalysis and as Guest Editor for the Journal of Organic Chemistry and Organic Process Research & Development. He is an External Advisory Board member of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated exceptional creativity in identifying and developing catalytic methods and building technologies to solve chemical synthesis problems of relevance to the pharmaceutical industry.