Lyle Isaacs was born in New York, New York in 1969. He received his B.S. from the University of Chicago in 1991. He obtained his M.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1992. Afterwards, he attended the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) where he received his Ph.D. while working under Professor Francois Diederich. That year he was awarded an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship and joined the lab of Professor George M. Whitesides at Harvard University. His studies with Whitesides focused on self-assembly – in organic solution, in water, and at surfaces. In 1998 he joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2004, and Professor in 2008. The Isaacs groups research concentrates on the design, synthesis, and recognition properties of members of the cucurbit[n]uril family, cucurbituril analogs, and the preparation of complex self-sorting systems.

Honors and Awards

2005 Visiting Professor, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
2003 Visiting Professor, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
2001 Junior Faculty Award, College of Life Sciences, University of Maryland
2001 Cottrell Scholar, Research Corporation
2000-2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award - Declined
1996-1998 National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow
1996 Silver Medallion Dissertation Award (ETH Zürich)
1991-1992 U.S. Department of Defense Graduate Fellow
1991-1992 University Fellow (UCLA)