Scott Daly has officially been promoted to Full Professor as of July 2026. He has been with the University of Iowa Department of Chemistry since 2014 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. Professor Daly has earned the CLAS Deans Scholar Award 2020-2022, the Hawkeye Distinguished Veterans Award in 2018, and was named a Chemical Communications Emerging Investigator from the Royal Society in Chemistry in 2020.

As an inorganic chemist specializing in coordination chemistry and ligand design, Professor Daly’s research with transition metals, main-group elements, lanthanides, and actinides is driven by fundamental questions relevant to pressing societal problems. His synthesis and ligand design efforts are supported by complementary ligand K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) data collected by Professor Daly’s group at synchrotron user facilities such as the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) and the Canadian Light Source (CLS). “These XAS measurements allow us to model how ligand variations affect metal-ligand bonding and electronic structure as it relates to chemical reactivity, and they support a holistic ligand design research program that lies at the interface of synthetic and physical inorganic chemistry.”

To learn more about Professor Daly, his group, and current research projects, visit  https://daly.lab.uiowa.edu/

Congratulations, Scott!