Dias named a 2025 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry

Rasika Dias, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Arlington, has been named a 2025 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Dias was selected for the prestigious honor for his outstanding contributions to the advancement of chemical sciences. The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), a professional society based in the United Kingdom, is the world’s oldest professional society of chemists. It was founded in 1841 and received a royal charter in 1848. RSC has more than 54,000 members.

“I am honored to receive this recognition from the Royal Society of Chemistry, which also underscores the contributions of my research group members,” Dias said.

Dias is the second current College of Science faculty member to be named an RSC Fellow, joining Daniel Armstrong, the Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry, who was honored in 2009.

“This is a tremendous and well-deserved honor for Dr. Dias,” said Morteza Khaledi, dean of the College of Science. “He has been conducting highly impactful research in inorganic and organometallic chemistry at UTA for many years. He also excels in teaching and in service to the department and the university.”

Dias’ research interests include catalysis, olefin-paraffin separation, ethylene effects on plants, luminescent materials, and reaction intermediates. His research group has made several important discoveries and reported structures and properties of rare copper, silver, and gold complexes, particularly those with small gaseous ligands such as ethylene, acetylene, and carbon monoxide.

He holds several patents and has published more than 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals, which have collected more than 18,000 citations.

Dias recently co-authored a series of papers and a patent describing the discovery of a novel class of non-porous materials that allow the separation of ethylene from ethylene-ethane mixtures to generate high-purity ethylene gas. This solid materials-based olefin-paraffin separation method could serve as an alternative to the highly energy-consuming, cryogenic distillation process.

In one of his recent collaborations, Dias co-authored a publication in Nature Communications that describes a simple path to introduce an important sulfur-containing functional group, methyl sulfone, to nitrogen-containing heterocycles resulting in highly useful precursors for medicinal and coordination chemistry.

Dias has received the Wilfred T. Doherty Award of the Dallas-Fort Worth Section of the American Chemical Society (2009), and the Southwest Regional American Chemical Society Award (2009), among other honors. Most recently he was named a 2025 Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors.

At UTA he has received awards for research, teaching, and service and is a member of the UTA Academy of Distinguished Scholars. He serves or has served on the editorial advisory boards of the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry, the Elsevier journal Polyhedron, and the RSC journal Dalton Transactions.

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