Acs Award For Team Innovation 2017 Recipients Affiliated Institutions

The email came in on a Tuesday. A colleague — mid-career, runs a materials science group at a state university — wanted to know who won the ACS Award for Team Innovation in 2017. Not just the team name. Which means she needed the affiliated institutions for a nomination packet she was building. "Just the official list," she said. "I'll format it myself.

I told her I'd look. Think about it: then I spent forty minutes clicking through ACS pages, PDF archives, and a few cached press releases. The information exists. It's public. But it's not sitting in one clean table.

If you're here for the same reason — writing a nomination, benchmarking a program, or just curious — this post walks through what the award actually is, why the 2017 cohort matters, and how to track down the recipients and their institutions without getting lost in the ACS site architecture.

What Is the ACS Award for Team Innovation

The American Chemical Society established the Award for Team Innovation to recognize collaborative research that delivers tangible, measurable impact. And not "promising early results. " Not "high-impact publications." Impact — as in: a product launched, a process adopted, a technology licensed, a standard changed.

It's one of the few ACS awards that explicitly honors teams* rather than individuals. The prize goes to groups of two or more researchers who worked together across disciplines, organizations, or sectors to solve a problem that none of them could have cracked alone.

The award started in 2011. Practically speaking, by 2017, it had settled into a rhythm: one winning team per year, announced in the fall, honored at the spring national meeting. The prize includes a collective cash award (split among team members), a certificate for each member, and travel support to the meeting.

What makes it distinct from the ACS Award for Creative Invention or the Heroes of Chemistry program? Scope and structure. Creative Invention honors individuals. In real terms, heroes of Chemistry celebrates industrial scientists whose work led to commercial products — but it's not limited to team-based nominations. The Team Innovation award sits in a specific niche: collaborative, cross-functional, outcome-driven chemistry*.

Why the 2017 Recipients Matter

Every cohort tells a story about where chemistry was heading that year. The 2017 winners — announced in August 2016, honored at the 253rd ACS National Meeting in San Francisco (April 2017) — reflected three trends that were accelerating at the time:

Materials by design, not trial-and-error. The winning work leaned heavily on computational screening paired with synthesis — a loop that was just becoming routine in battery and catalyst development.

Industry-academic partnerships that actually shipped. Not "we signed an MOU." Real co-development: shared IP, joint publications, pilot-scale runs.

Sustainability metrics baked in from day one. Not a lifecycle analysis tacked onto a paper's SI. The teams built carbon-footprint and supply-chain constraints into their objective functions.

If you're benchmarking a team for a future nomination, the 2017 profile is a useful reference point: interdisciplinary, externally validated, and quantitatively documented.

How to Find the 2017 Recipients and Their Institutions

Here's the practical part. Because of that, aCS doesn't publish a single "all years, all names, all institutions" spreadsheet. But the data is recoverable through three reliable paths.

Path 1: The Official ACS Award Page (Most Direct)

Go to the ACS Awards database: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/funding-and-awards/awards.html

Search "Team Innovation" in the award finder. Still, click the specific award page. There's a "Past Recipients" tab or link. On top of that, the list goes year by year. Click 2017.

You'll see the team name — usually the project or technology name, not a list of individuals. Click through to the press release or the "Recipient Details" page. That page lists:

Team members (names)
Affiliated institutions at time of award
One-paragraph citation

Watch for: Some members list dual appointments. The award page typically shows the primary affiliation at the time of nomination*. If someone moved between nomination and announcement, the older institution may still appear.

Path 2: ACS Press Releases (Cleanest for Citations)

ACS issues a press release for each award class, usually in August before the meeting. The 2017 class release went out August 2016.

Search: site:acs.org "2017" "Team Innovation" "award" press release

Or go directly to the ACS Newsroom archive: https://www.So org/content/acs/en/pressroom. acs.html → News Releases → filter by year 2016 (since the award is announced the prior year).

The press release lists every award, not just Team Innovation. Plus, scroll or find-in-page for "Team Innovation. " You'll get the team name, all members, institutions, and the official citation language — which is useful if you're quoting it in a nomination packet.

Path 3: Chemical & Engineering News* Coverage (Best Context)

C&EN covers the award announcements every year. Their articles are more readable than press releases and often include a sentence or two about why the work mattered.

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Search: cen.acs.org "Team Innovation" 2017

Or browse the "Awards" tag in C&EN's archive. The 2017 article (published August 2016) will name the team, members, institutions, and usually a quote from one of the recipients or the award committee chair.

Pro tip: C&EN articles sometimes list current* institutions if a member moved after the press release went out. Cross-reference with the ACS award page for the official version.

Common Mistakes When Tracking This Down

Confusing the award year with the announcement year. The "2017 Award" is announced in 2016. If you search "2017 ACS Team Innovation award" you'll get the 2018 winners (announced 2017). Always verify: announced August 2016, presented April 2017*.

Assuming the team name equals the institution. The team is often named after the technology ("The Lithium-Sulfur Battery Team") or the lead PI ("The Dahn Group"). The institutions are listed per member*. Don't cite the team name as an affiliation.

Missing members who weren't lead authors. The award recognizes the team*. The press release and award page list all named recipients — sometimes 4, sometimes 12 people. If you're building a table, capture everyone. Leaving out the analytical chemist who did the operando XRD because they weren't on the Nature paper is exactly the kind of omission the award committee designed this prize to prevent.

Using outdated affiliation data. People move. If you're writing a nomination now and citing the 2017 team as a precedent, use the institutions as listed in the official 2017 award record*. Add a parenthetical "at time of award" if you're being precise.

Practical Tips for Using This Data

If You're Building a Nomination Packet

Pull the official citation language from the press release. Mirror its structure: problem → collaborative approach → measurable outcome.
Note the team size and composition
Highlight the interdisciplinarity. If the team includes a mix of materials scientists, computational chemists, and engineers, stress this. The ACS Team Innovation award is specifically designed to celebrate cross-disciplinary synergy; demonstrating that you understand this nuance shows the committee you are modeling your proposal after successful precedents.

If You're Conducting a Literature Review

Trace the "Award-Winning" citation. Once you have the names, search for their most cited work from that specific period. Often, the award is given for a specific breakthrough paper. Linking the award to the specific DOI provides a much stronger academic foundation than simply stating "the team won an award."
Map the collaborative network. Use the list of members to see if there is a pattern of recurring collaborations between specific institutions. This can help you identify "hubs" of innovation in a particular sub-field.

If You're Writing a Grant or Bio-sketch

Use the "Award-Winning" descriptor sparingly but effectively. Instead of saying "The team won the ACS Team Innovation award," try "The collaborative framework established by the [Year] ACS Team Innovation winners demonstrates the efficacy of..." This shifts the focus from the trophy to the methodology* of the work, which is more persuasive to reviewers.

Summary Checklist

Before finalizing your research or documentation, run through this quick verification list:

[ ] Year Check: Did I account for the one-year offset between announcement and award year?
[ ] Member Check: Did I include every individual listed in the official press release?
[ ] Affiliation Check: Am I using the institutions as they were held at the time of the award?
[ ] Context Check: Have I verified the "why" through a secondary source like C&EN* to ensure I'm not misrepresenting the impact?

Conclusion

Tracking down historical award data requires more than a simple Google search; it requires an understanding of how scientific organizations communicate their honors. Now, by navigating the distinction between announcement and presentation years, cross-referencing official ACS press releases with journalistic coverage in Chemical & Engineering News*, and meticulously documenting every team member, you transform raw data into a powerful narrative. Whether you are building a case for a new nomination or mapping the history of a scientific breakthrough, precision in these details ensures your work is grounded in the highest standard of academic accuracy.