2026 Highlights List
Women in Chemistry and Materials
Chemistry and Materials
Featured in the 2026 Women in STEM Highlights List: Michelle C. Chang, PhD, Zhenan Bao, PhD.
Michelle C. Chang, PhD
Michelle Chang is an outstanding scientist in the field of organic chemistry and a named professor at Princeton University (A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Chemistry). She has made seminal contributions across broad areas of biosynthesis and biocatalysts, where she has developed synthetic methods to advance the preparation of halogenated natural products of medical importance and biomass conversion for energy and environmental science. Her findings are being applied broadly from the development of biofuels to pharmaceuticals. Dr. Chang studied chemistry/biochemistry and French literature as an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego and completed her PhD in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chemistry and MaterialsZhenan Bao, PhD
Zhenan Bao is the K. K. Lee Professor, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, of Chemistry, and of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Bao founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR) and is the current faculty director. At Stanford, Bao has pioneered molecular design concepts and fabrication processes to advance the scope and applications of skin-inspired electronics. Her group discovered nano confinement effect of conjugated polymers in polymer blends, which established the fundamental foundation for skin-inspired electronic materials and devices. Her work has resulted in new materials and device solutions for soft robotics, wearable and implantable electronics for precision health, precision mental health and advanced tools for understanding neuroscience and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. She received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from The University of Chicago in 1995.