Simon North

Dr. Simon W. North is the John W. Bevan Professor of Chemistry and has served as Executive Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences since June 1, 2024. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining the Texas A&M faculty in 1997 as a member of the Department of Chemistry. He had been the head of Texas A&M Chemistry since August 2016 after serving as interim head of the department for the previous seven months and as associate head from Sept. 2013 to Feb. 2016. In addition, he is co-director of the National Aerothermochemistry Laboratory and a former associate director of the Center for Atmospheric Chemistry and the Environment. Dr. North also served for nearly a decade as one of the primary advising and recruiting contacts for the Texas A&M Chemistry graduate program and played a lead role in the planning, programming and championing of Texas A&M’s Instructional Laboratory & Innovative Learning Building (ILSQ), described as the premier laboratory building in the country and a showcase for undergraduate chemistry teaching laboratories spanning general chemistry to organic chemistry. Widely respected for his teaching and research expertise in analytical and physical chemistry as well as in spectroscopy and dynamics, Dr. North and his research group seek to understand chemical reactivity on a microscopic quantum-state resolved level. His state-of-the-art laboratory contains equipment to perform experiments in chemical dynamics, energy transfer and kinetics and is associated with several interdisciplinary university research centers at Texas A&M. He also has led several impactful department-wide initiatives to revitalize the undergraduate curriculum in chemistry, including an overhaul of the upper division physical chemistry laboratory courses to better reflect the current state of modern research in the area. In addition to being recognized with the inaugural Administration Award in the College of Arts and Sciences last May, Dr. North is a past recipient of Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Awards in Teaching at both the university (2009) and college levels (2004 and 2010) — the last of which he was nominated for by his students.