Julie A. Kovacs

Professor Kovacs received her Ph.D. from Harvard with Richard Holm and was the recipient of a UC President's postdoctoral fellowship to work at UC Berkeley with Robert Bergman. She joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington in 1988, where she is currently a full Professor. She is the recipient of the 2023 Franklin Award at Stony Brook, was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022, served as Chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Inorganic Chemistry in 2020, and Chaired the Metals in Biology Gordon Research conference in 2008. She has been ~continuously funded by the NIH since 1992 raising millions of dollars for research on the UW campus. Kovacs invitations to present Plenary and Keynote lectures at international conferences reflects her standing in the bioinorganic community. Kovacs’ research focusses on the role of iron thiolates in promoting the biosynthesis of biomolecules important to human health. Lively conversations with her father, a theoretical physicist, sparked her interest in science at a very young age. Other than science, Professor Kovacs has a passion for coffee, yoga, meditation, hiking, biking, and snorkeling!