“If you’re Native American and you grow up worshipping nature, you don’t naturally gravitate to a field like chemistry. But I did. I became inspired by [chemical] transformations as a young student.” – Erik Sorenson
Erik Sorensen was born in New York in 1967 and is a member of the Onondaga tribe. He spent his childhood living on a reservation near Syracuse, NY. While originally focused on becoming a professional cross country athlete, he fell in love with organic chemistry at Syracuse University. He pursued his PhD in chemistry at UC San Diego, was an NSF post-doc fellow at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and is now a professor at Princeton. In college, he faced resistance from his family upon deciding to study chemistry rather than medicine. His mothercried when told his decision—worried about how Erik his degree would help his native nation. Sorensen now researches organic synthesis pathways and focuses on being a role model for Native American students pursuing science. Sorensen has been awarded awarded a scholar award by the American Chemical Society and the AstraZenica award of excellence in chemistry.