Paul W. Bohn received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. After a two-year stint at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ as a Member of Technical Staff in the Special Materials Group, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). While at UIUC, he served as Centennial Professor in Chemical Sciences, Professor of Chemistry, Professor in the Beckman Institute, Research Professor in the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and as a member of the Materials Research Laboratory. He also served as Interim Director of the School of Chemical Sciences in 1993-94, and Head of the Chemistry Department in 1994-99. In 2001-02, he was Interim Vice Chancellor for Research, the senior research officer of the UIUC campus.
In August 2006, he left UIUC to join the faculty at the University of Notre Dame as the Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He served as Editor for the Americas for the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Analyst 2007-09 and a full term as Chair of the Editorial Board for Analyst (2010-2013). Prof. Bohn also serves as Project Director for the Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics Initiative, one of five inaugural Strategic research Initiatives established in 2008 at Notre Dame. He has served on numerous editorial and scientific boards, including Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry, Biomicrofluidics, Tyndall FlexiFab for Applied Convergent Nanotechnologies, and the Analytical Division Council of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Dr. Bohn’s research interests include: (a) integrated nanofluidic and microfluidic chemical measurement strategies for personal monitoring, (b) chemical and biochemical sensing in mass-limited samples, (c) chemical imaging, and (d) molecular approaches to nanotechnology.
Dr. Bohn has received a number of awards and recognitions including the Coblentz Award in 1990 for his outstanding contributions to the field of molecular spectroscopy by investigators under the age of 36, the American Chemical Society Award in Spectrochemical Analysis in 1997, the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Society Award in 2004 for his pioneering contributions to the optical spectroscopy of condensed matter interfaces, the Bomem-Michelson Award from the Coblentz Society in 2005 and the Theophilus Redwood Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2010. He was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) in 2008 and Fellow of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy in 2012. While at the University of Illinois, he was a Beckman Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study (1986-87) and a University Scholar (1993-96), and he was award the Presidential Faculty Fellowship at Notre Dame (2007).
Dr. Bohn has authored/coauthored over 230 publications in fields centered on the understanding and control of molecular transport on the nanometer length scale, spatially anisotropic surfaces, optical spectroscopic measurement strategies for surface and interfacial structure-function studies, molecular nanoelectronics, and the characterization of optoelectronic materials. He has 6 patents issued and 4 pending in technologies related to these efforts. In addition, he has delivered over 200 invited lectures at universities, national laboratories, and industrial laboratories throughout the world and has served as a consultant for companies both in the United States and in Europe.