Dream Chemistry Award 2024 Finals: a visionary winner has been selected

We now know the results of the Dream Chemistry Award (DCA) 2024 finals. The winner of DCA 2024 is Dr. Richard Liu from Harvard University, USA.

Established in 2013 by the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences (IChF) and co-organized since 2017 with the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague), the DCA celebrates the transformative power of visionary science. The finals, held on December 2, 2024, at the IChF headquarters in Warsaw, featured five young chemists, each presenting their “dream chemistry” projects.

Since its foundation, the DCA has become Poland's most prestigious international science competition, known for promoting bold, innovative, and original chemistry dreams. Encouraging free imagination, the competition offers winners a prestigious award, a symbolic DCA statuette, and a €10,000 prize, supporting the potential realization of their breakthrough ideas. Through collaboration, support, and a commitment to innovative thinking, DCA inspires young scientists to create transformative ideas that redefine the boundaries of modern chemistry.

Dr. Richard Liu has won the DCA with the project Organic Molecules That Mimic Transition Metals for Sustainable Chemical Synthesis, aiming to revolutionize chemical catalysis for greener production processes. Dr. Richard Liu is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. The Liu Group explores redox-active organic moieties as novel catalytic platforms, new methodologies to generate nano-structured carbon platforms, and applying myriad physical techniques to elucidate complex reaction mechanisms.

Reflecting on winning this competition, the 2024 DCA laureate Dr. Richard Liu remarked:

“I am honored and grateful to the organizers, IChf and IOCB Prague, for appreciating and affirming our vision for sustainable catalysis. Having gotten to know the exceptional group of finalists and their inspiring ideas, I consider it a tremendous recognition to be selected. I view the Award as vital encouragement, at this early stage of my career, to pursue bold and risky projects. Compared to prizes based more on a candidate’s “productivity,” past achievements, and/or short-term potential for impact, this Dream Chemistry Award chooses to reward ambitious, transformative, and unconventional ways of thinking – therefore, it celebrates what I consider to be the most important parts of science, and so, winning this Award is particularly meaningful.”

For more information about the competition, visit the DCA website: Dream Chemistry Award website.

First day of the Finals of the Dream Chemistry Award 2024 (link)

DCA 2024 – special lecture: My Dream – Prof. Robert Hołyst (link)

Author: Dr. Anna Przybyło-Józefowicz, Photo: Grzegorz Krzyżewski, Graphic: Władysław Żolik.