The 2025 CNS Alumni Awards
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Matthew Tirrell PhD '77, Derrick Maxwell BS '14, and Ahmed A. H. Siddig PhD ’15 have been named the recipients of the 2025 College of Natural Sciences (CNS) Alumni Awards. These awards, a collaboration between the college and the CNS Dean’s Advisory Board, aim to recognize the wonderful accomplishments of the college’s former trainees.
The CNS Distinguished Alumni Award: Matthew Tirrell
The recipient of the 2025 CNS Distinguished Alumni Award is Matthew Tirrell PhD '77. The Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes an alum who has grown into a visionary leader in their field and has reached exceptional levels of leadership, service, teaching, innovation, and/or accomplishments that positively impact society.
Tirrell serves as the D. Gale Johnson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has also held positions at: the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Minnesota. Tirrell earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University in 1973, followed by a PhD from CNS's Department of Polymer Science and Engineering (PSE) in 1977. His work has chartered new fields in molecular engineering, and Tirrell has led several units at different institutions to earn top national and global rankings in their respective fields.
The CNS Early Career Alumni Award: Derrick Maxwell and Ahmed A. H. Siddig
The recipients of the 2025 CNS Early Career Alumni Award are Derrick Maxwell BS '14 and Ahmed A. H. Siddig PhD ’15. The CNS Early Career Alumni Award recognizes emerging leaders in the early stages of their careers, whose outstanding professional and personal achievements highlight the recipients’ ambitions and potential to positively impact society.
In 2022, Maxwell started Propriety Inc., doing business as Amel Energy, where he serves as CEO, president, and founder. Based in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) Collaboratories at UMass Amherst, the company develops safer and greener materials for the energy storage industry, focusing on solvent-based processing, polymer innovation, and greenhouse gas reduction. He graduated from CNS in 2014 with a BS in Chemistry and subsequently completed a graduate certificate in Engineering Leadership as a Gordon Institute Fellow at Northeastern University, with his MS thesis focusing on polymer binders in lithium-ion batteries for use in electric vehicles.
After earning his PhD from CNS’s Department of Environmental Conservation, Siddig returned to his native Sudan in 2017 to take an assistant professor position in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Khartoum, quickly rising to associate professor by 2019. His research there examines the effects of climate and land-use change on savanna ecosystems, which millions of people rely on for natural resources. In addition, Siddig was awarded the prestigious Bullard Fellowship at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA (2024-2025); and was awarded the 2020-2021 Deanship of Scientific Research Award for Excellence from the University of Khartoum, for his work in mentorship and other achievements.
Award Ceremony
On November 14, CNS will congratulate these three awardees and all faculty and staff in Polymer Science and Engineering, Chemistry, and Environmental Conservation who contributed to their training!