Michelle Personick is a scholar of inorganic materials chemistry and catalysis. Her research focuses on the precision synthesis of metal nanomaterials and the use of these materials to enable fundamental research toward improved catalysts for resource-efficient chemical synthesis and the clean production of energy. The goal of this research is to contribute to transforming the overall energy landscape and offsetting the driving forces of climate change. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Army Research Office and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund.

Personick holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University (2013) and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Middlebury College (2009). From 2013 to 2015, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University as part of the Integrated Mesoscale Architectures for Sustainable Catalysis Energy Frontier Research Center. She joins UVA from Wesleyan University, where she was Associate Professor of Chemistry and Associate Professor of Integrative Sciences.

As an associate professor of chemistry, Personick will teach courses on topics such as nanomaterials chemistry, catalysis, inorganic chemistry and general chemistry. This year, she will offer a course titled “Physical Characterization of Inorganic Nanomaterials.”