Randy S. Duran

Dr. Duran serves as the Gordon A. Cain Chair for STEM Literacy and Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research at LSU.  He also serves as Executive Director of the Gordon A. Cain Center for STEM Literacy. Dr. Duran came to LSU in 2009 following 20 years at the University of Florida, where in addition to winning an NSF Young Investigator Award as a professor of chemistry, he initiated a variety of teaching and international research programs. Having earned a doctoral degree from the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, Dr. Duran’s international programs have subsequently produced great successes for participants, including a Rhodes Scholar in 2001, a Marshal Awardee in 2009, and students who are now professors in several countries.  While at Florida, he was a member and subsequent PI of the NSF funded nationwide Chemistry REU Leadership Group and in 2005 was a co-organizer of the “Pan-REU Workshop” involving all seven directorates of NSF for the first time. In 2009, Dr. Duran was awarded with “Chevalier (knight) dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques” for lifetime contribution to French Education. In 2010 he led the sixth renewal of the LSU Undergraduate Howard Hughes Medical Institute award, after having started the program at Florida four years earlier. Dr. Duran has also maintained a strong research effort in materials/polymer research that has included more than $20M in support from more than 100 funded proposals and agencies ranging from NSF to ONR, AFOSR, and DARPA.   He has also been active in curricular development, serving as a consultant to McGraw Hill and Addison Wesley publishers.

Contact: rduran@lsu.edu

Website: http://chemistry.lsu.edu/site/People/Faculty/Randy%20Duran/item3165.html