Selvan Demir, an assistant professor of chemistry at Michigan State University, is a recipient of a 2025 research fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The two-year $75,000 fellowships are awarded annually to early-career researchers whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders.
"The Sloan Research Fellows represent the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward,” says Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “These extraordinary scholars are already making significant contributions, and we are confident they will shape the future of their fields in remarkable ways.”
“I am very excited and deeply honored to be named a 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow,” Demir said.
“Greatly motivated by this distinction, I will strive to achieve innovative discoveries and to pursue scientific breakthroughs in the fields of organometallic chemistry and molecular magnetism.”
At MSU, Demir stands out as an exceptional organometallic and inorganic chemist, renowned for her groundbreaking, creative work in designing new molecular compounds based on rare earth metals and heavy p-block elements such as bismuth.
She developed a highly productive research program in which her group synthesizes peerless molecules with the aim to overcome current limits in spin science.
The bigger picture is to construct new rare earth metal coordination compounds containing heavy p-block elements in low oxidation states, and organic radicals to generate coveted room-temperature single-molecule magnets. Such sought-after molecules hold promise to revolutionize applications in high-density information storage, quantum computing, and spin-based electronics.
Since 2021, she published 31 research papers, where 18 were featured on the front covers of journals and delivered 127 invited seminars to chemistry and physics communities in 25 countries. She received the NSF CAREER award, the American Chemical Society’s ACS WCC 2025 Rising Star award, and the Bessel award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
This story originally appeared on the Department of Chemistry website.
