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Berkeley's Karthik Shekhar named Dreyfus teacher-scholar
The award honors early-career faculty in the chemical sciences who have established an independent body of scholarship
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Pranavi Sharma - Wed, 29, Apr 2026
- 01:59 EDT
- 17
Karthik Shekhar / University of California, Berkeley
An Indian-origin scientist, Karthik Shekhar, has been named a 2026 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar by The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, which announced 17 new recipients of the award.
Shekhar is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His recognized project is titled ‘The Chemical Physics of Bioelectricity: From Ion Channels to Emergent Excitability.’
The award honors early-career faculty in the chemical sciences who have established an independent body of scholarship and show strong commitment to undergraduate education. Each recipient receives an unrestricted research grant of $100,000.
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According to his university profile, Shekhar is a chemical engineer and computational biologist whose work lies at the intersection of neuroscience and biophysics. He is known for developing single-cell transcriptomic methods to map cellular diversity in complex tissues, including the brain and retina.
His current research focuses on two areas. One examines the molecular basis of the development and evolution of neural circuits using single-cell genomics and computational approaches. The other studies the mechanisms underlying bioelectricity, including charge dynamics and electromechanics at membrane interfaces, through theoretical and computational methods.
At Berkeley, Shekhar is also a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and is affiliated with graduate groups in computational biology, biophysics and vision science.
He has received several teaching and research honors. These include the Faculty Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring at UC Berkeley in 2025 and the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2023. He also received departmental teaching awards in 2022, 2023 and 2025.
Other recognitions include the McKnight Scholar in Neuroscience award in 2023 and the Young Alumnus Achiever Award from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2024.
The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards were established in 1970 to support the research and teaching careers of young faculty in the chemical sciences. The program is awarded annually and the grant amount was increased from $75,000 to $100,000 in 2019.
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