Illinois chemist named 2025 Packard Fellow

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WAND) - A chemistry professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been named a 2025 Packard Fellow by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Benjamin Snyder was named one of this year's class of 20 innovative early-career scientists and engineers, who will each get $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.

Snyder's research at the U of I involves inorganic materials and physical chemistry. "We study porous materials like zeolites and metal-organic frameworks with fascinating applications ranging from heterogeneous catalysis to adsorptive separations," he said. "We use advanced physical-inorganic spectroscopy to understand how these materials work and then use tools from materials synthesis to make them work better."

Snyder got a Ph.D. from Standford University in 2018 and pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, as an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow. He joined the faculty at Illinois in 2023 and is affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory.

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