Fellows AwardFellows Award: This award is established to recognize individual members for their outstanding achievements in and contributions to the science, the profession, and the Society. Up to 12 Fellows per year may be selected. Nomination for the award of Fellow must be made by current Society Fellows, the Executive Committee, the Governing Board, or the Fellows Committee. The Fellows Committee shall review all nominations and shall forward the award slate to the Society's Executive Committee for final approval. Fellows must continue to be members in good standing of the Society in order to maintain Fellow status. Nomination material should include a letter of recommendation with supporting documentation regarding the nominee's contributions to the Society and spectroscopy, a current CV, and a short bio. To nominate an SAS member to become a Fellow, please consider the following information and use the link below for the nomination form. In order to be considered for the 2026 award, the nomination must be received by December 1, 2025. Please check back for our 2025 nomination form. 2025The 2025 Fellow Recipients are:
Dr. George Chan, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA, USA Prior to joining Berkeley Lab in 2012, he served as an assistant scientist on the research faculty in the Department of Chemistry at Indiana University. George’s research focuses on the fundamental properties and diagnostic studies of various analytical plasmas used in spectroscopic analysis, with an emphasis on understanding the mechanisms governing interactions between plasma species, the sample’s chemical matrix, and analyte atomic or molecular systems. In recent years, he has expanded his research to address challenges in nuclear safeguards, applying his expertise in analytical atomic spectroscopy to optical uranium enrichment assays, including laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). George and his colleagues have published more than 75 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Several of his publications have been recognized with notable honors, including the Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS)/North American Society for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (NASLIBS) Award (2024) and the Elsevier/Spectrochimica Acta Atomic Spectroscopy Award (2004, 2013, 2016, and 2024). His other accolades include the American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry Graduate Fellowship (2005), the SAS Graduate Student Award (2006), the Gordon F. Kirkbright Bursary Award (2008), and the Emerging Leader in Atomic Spectroscopy Award (presented by Spectroscopy magazine, 2017). He currently serves as editor for the review section of Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy.
Jay P. Kitt, PhD, MS, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah. Dr. Kitt's academic journey at the University of Utah is marked by a PhD in Analytical Chemistry (2016) with a focus on Raman Microscopy, an MS in Biomedical Informatics (2020). His research focuses on the use of vibrational spectroscopy and microspectroscopy to study analytical and biophysical chemistry challenges with significant contributions in understanding liquid/solid interfaces and phospholipid membrane biochemistry. Dr. Kitt has also recently begun a new role, consulting in spectroscopy and chemometrics/cheminformatics. Dr. Kitt has been recognized as a Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS), a testament to his impact and dedicated service within the spectroscopy community. In 2024, he received both the SAS Early Career Scientist Award for his accomplishments in spectroscopy and the SAS Distinguished Service Award for his long-standing contributions to the Society, including a re-write of the Society’s bylaws in 2020. His commitment to service within the society is extensive, including serving as Guest Editor for Applied Spectroscopy, as a member of the Publications Committee (2022-Present), the Governing Documents Committee (2020-Present), and as Parliamentarian (2019-Present). He also previously served as an At-large Delegate to the SAS Governing Board and chaired the University of Utah Student Chapter of SAS. These roles, alongside a Presidential Service Award in 2021, underscore his extraordinary dedication to advancing the Society and the field of spectroscopy as a whole.
Prof. Iaon Notingher, University of Nottingham, UK He started his academic career as a lecturer in 2006 at the University of Nottingham, where he established the Biophotonics Group, and was appointed full professor in 2015. His research focuses on optical microscopy and spectroscopy techniques for label-free molecular imaging of biomaterials, cells and tissues. His team has developed numerous links with clinicians, cancer research academics, and partnerships with industry. In particular, the selective-sampling Raman spectroscopy techniques developed by Ioan’s group allow fast scanning of tissue specimens and can be applied during cancer surgery to assess surgical margins. Prototypes based on these technologies are currently being investigated in the clinic. Ioan has supported the Society by at the Scix conferences (established two sessions since 2018) and was awarded the 2024 William F. Meggers Award for the best paper published in the journal Applied Spectroscopy.
Prof. Rohith Reddy, University of Houston, Houston, USA Dr. Reddy currently serves on the Applied Spectroscopy Advisory Board and the SAS Publications Committee. He is a lifetime member of both the Society for Applied Spectroscopy and the Coblentz Society and is the current President-elect of the Coblentz Society. He previously served on the Coblentz Society Board, where he led initiatives to support early-career spectroscopists, and on the SAS Nominations and Meggers Award Committees. He also served as editor of a special issue of Applied Spectroscopy focused on vibrational spectroscopy for disease monitoring. For more than a decade, Dr. Reddy has organized conference sessions on spectroscopy and biomedical imaging at SciX and SPIE Photonics West. A committed faculty mentor, he provides guidance and support to emerging scientists through both SAS and the Coblentz Society, helping shape the next generation of leaders in spectroscopy. Dr. Reddy received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed his postdoctoral fellowship under Dr. Gary Tearney at Harvard Medical School. His research centers on vibrational spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging for biomedical applications. He has applied these technologies to the diagnosis and study of prostate, breast, bone marrow, and gynecologic cancers, as well as kidney disorders and Alzheimer’s disease. His lab develops novel spectroscopic imaging instruments and advanced data-analysis algorithms to enable high-resolution, spatiotemporal investigation of disease progression in both clinical and research contexts. Dr. Reddy holds B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. His numerous accolades include the Applied Spectroscopy William F. Meggers Award (2014), the FACSS Innovation Awards (2012, 2016), the Tomas Hirschfeld Award (2012), the William G. Fateley Student Award (2011), the Coblentz Student Award (2011), the SAS Graduate Student Award (2011), and multiple FACSS Student Poster Awards (2007, 2009, 2011). He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and holds seven U.S. patents.
SAS FELLOWS Fran Adar Kathleen M. Gough Nancy J. Miller-Ihli |
Professor Jay Kitt, University of Utah, UT, USA
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