Prof. Dr. Sandra Luber
Prof. Dr. Sandra Luber is a distinguished theoretical and computational researcher with a broad academic career that spans forefront method development and advanced applications. Her scientific excellence has been recognized through numerous prestigious awards—several of which she earned as the first female or the first theoretician.
Sandra Luber studied chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she earnerd the Master’s degree (MSc ETH Chemistry). She completed her PhD (Dr. sc. ETH Zurich) in (relativistic) quantum chemistry and theoretical spectroscopy under the supervision of Markus Reiher. After a postdoctoral stay in the field of bioinformatics with Mihaela Zavolan at Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland, she joined Victor S. Batista’s group at Yale University, USA. Following industry experience (no research) at BASF SE, she became project group leader with Jürg Hutter at University of Zurich where she completed her habilitation in 2016. In 2017, she was appointed professor at the University of Zurich and awarded a prestigious SNSF Professorship, among others.
Besides various awards at music/sport competitions, research awards include the IBM Research Prize for Computer Modelling and Simulations in Chemistry, Biology, and Materials Science, Forschungskredit, and the ETH medal for an outstanding PhD thesis.
She was the first theoretician to receive the Clara Immerwahr Award and the Jochen Block Prize from the German Catalysis Society. Moreover, she was the first female scientist to obtain the Hellmann Award (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Theoretische Chemie), the Walter Thiel Award (European Chemical Society), and the Robin Hochstrasser Young Investigator Award. Additional accolades include the Werner Prize (Swiss Chemical Society), OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, Carl Duisberg Memorial Prize (German Chemical Society), Coblentz Award (Coblentz Society), Philip J. Stephens Award, and the Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry (American Chemical Society).
A career path doesn’t always have to be straight
Interview with Sandra Luber, AcademiaNet, 27.7.2020