Media Credit: Brenna Cheyney Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Professor Geri Richmond said of her graduate students, "the award is as much a tribute to their hard work as it is to mine." Grad students Adam Hopkins, Cathryn McFearin, and Dan Beaman work along side Richmond in the chemistry lab. [Click to enlarge]

The odds aren't good for snagging a Guggenheim Fellowship in chemistry.

Out of 2,800 artists, scholars and scientists who applied nationally this year, only 189 were selected; only two of those winners are chemists.

University chemistry professor Geri Richmond is one of them.

The Guggenheim Fellowship to Assist Research and Artistic Creation, administered by the New York-based John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, selects fellows on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for the future.

Fellows are first nominated by members in their academic community, said Richmond, then nominees are invited to apply.

Richmond said that it was hard to compare this award with the others but that it, "is very much an honor." She was nominated by several other academics around the nation.

Richmond, who applied for the fellowship for the first time this year, believes she was a strong candidate because of her numerous publications and her active role in the scientific community.

The recipient of numerous awards, Richmond has also been given a 2005-06 Council for Chemical Research Diversity Award and was the sole winner of the Spiers Medal from Great Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry in 2004.

Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted more than $256 million to individuals. The average amount for the award is $40,200 this year and yet Richmond doesn't know exactly how she will spend the money.

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