Winner: 2025 Chemical Science Lectureship
Christopher Chang
Princeton University
For making significant contributions to the chemical sciences community and beyond.
Chris Chang is the Edward and Virginia Taylor Professor of Bioorganic ÀË»¨Ö±²¥ at Princeton University. He completed his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Caltech in 1997 with Harry Gray, a Fulbright scholarship with Jean-Pierre Sauvage, a Ph.D. from MIT in 2002 with Dan Nocera, and a postdoc at MIT with Steve Lippard. Chris started his independent career at UC Berkeley in 2004 before moving to Princeton in 2024.
studies the chemistry and biology of the elements. His group has pioneered the concept of activity-based sensing, showing that selectivity in sensor design is achievable by reaction-based methods that go beyond traditional binding-based approaches that operate by lock-and-key molecular recognition.
Christopher's work has also changed dogma in the inorganic and chemical biology communities by showing that transition metals are not merely active site cofactors in proteins but also serve as dynamic transition metal signals that operate as allosteric regulators of protein function through metalloallostery, giving rise to new metal-dependent cell growth and proliferation pathways such as cuproplasia and ferroplasia.
He has mentored nearly 150 graduate, postdoc, and undergraduate researchers, with 46 alumni who are now faculty leading their own laboratories. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief for Accounts of Chemical Research.