Dr. Nathan Lewis, George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry, has been on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology since 1988 and has served as professor since 1991. He has also served as the principal investigator of the Beckman Institute Molecular Materials Resource Center at Caltech since 1992. From 1981 to 1986, Nate was on the faculty at Stanford, as an assistant professor from 1981 to 1985, and as a tenured associate professor from 1986 to 1988. Nate received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Nate has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and a Presidential Young Investigator. He received the Fresenius Award in 1990, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry in 1991, the Orton Memorial Lecture award in 2003, and the Princeton Environmental Award in 2003. He has published more than 200 papers and has supervised approximately 50 graduate students and postdoctoral associates.

Nate's research interests include light-induced electron transfer reactions, both at surfaces and in transition metal complexes; surface chemistry and photochemistry of semiconductor / liquid interfaces; novel uses of conducting organic polymers and polymer / conductor composites; and development of sensor arrays that use pattern recognition algorithms to identify odorants, mimicking the mammalian olfaction process.