UNIVERISTY PARK, Pa. — Lauren Zarzar, professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering, has been named a recipient of the 2026 Schmidt Science Polymath Award. This award supports mid-career researchers who are expanding into new research domains, experimenting with new methodologies, and inspiring scientific breakthroughs.
With the addition of this year’s cohort, the Polymaths community will include 43 awardees from 31 institutions across nine countries. Zarzar is one of eight awardees in this year’s cohort who were selected from an applicant pool of more than 150 applicants.
Zarzar’s research focuses on dynamic materials that sense and adapt to their surroundings and are thus primed to be integral components of future technologies. For example, the Zarzar group studies the properties and motion of oil-in-water-like droplets that can be applied to the development of new fluid materials that are reconfigurable or stimuli-responsive, like those needed for pollutant removal or medical treatments.
“I’m deeply honored to receive the Schmidt Sciences Polymath Award,” Zarzar said. “It’s wonderful how the foundation so meaningfully supports scientists in exploring high-risk unconventional ideas and I am extremely excited to pursue bold, creative research directions in the coming years.”
Zarzar’s previous achievements include receiving the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship, a Penn State Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in chemistry, the Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award from the Penn State Materials Research Institute, a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, the Unilever Award from the Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, and the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Zarzar was a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2013 to 2016. She earned a doctoral degree in chemistry at Harvard University in 2013 and bachelor's degrees in chemistry and in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008.