Jane Frommer is a scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center where she runs a lab involved in research in the basic sciences that form the underpinnings of nanotechnology. Since getting her Ph.D. from Caltech’s chemistry department in organometallic chemistry, her research has focused primarily on organic materials in the solid state with the approach of a mechanistic chemist. Her interest in the molecular origin of physical properties of materials was first manifested with organic conductors and then found its outlet in atomic force microscopes.

She has published over one hundred scientific articles, including several seminal review and encyclopedia chapters, and was the founding editor of Procedures in Scanning Probe Microscopies. Her current scanning probe lab at IBM collaborates with a wide variety of academic and industrial materials research programs. A common theme in lectures she delivers at universities and scientific conferences is the correlation between the properties and structure of molecules in confined geometries.

In the scientific community Jane plays the roles of technical symposium organizer and editor, often for the American Chemical Society. She serves in various capacities for the National Science Foundation, both in Washington and at funded academic sites. The international aspect of scientific research has taken her to South America, Europe, Asia and the MidEast, for periods of several weeks to several years. She is a research mentor to many young scientists, often supervising undergraduate and graduate internships in her laboratory. Her outreach activities find her performing science demos in several local high schools, judging at science fairs, and speaking before professional technical societies in academia.