Dr. Bruce M. Novak

In 2010 Maurine Johnson, wife of the late Dr. Francis “Frank” Johnson, UT Dallas’ first acting president, became a member of the Legacy Society with a planned gift intended to create the Francis S. and Maurine G. Johnson Distinguished University Chair in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Upon her death in 2016 at the age of 97, Johnson’s gift of $5.5 million became the largest planned gift in UTD’s history. In addition to establishing the original distinguished chair, the bequest allowed the University to create seven additional Francis S. and Maurine G. Johnson Chairs to support the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

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“Our faculty are utilizing the latest research techniques and facilities, and inventing some of their own, and many are working at the interface of multiple disciplines. All this expertise and innovative thinking makes for a very dynamic and diverse research and teaching environment, so our students graduate well prepared to meet the world’s scientific and societal challenges.”

Dr. Bruce Novak joined UT Dallas in 2011 and served as dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics for eight years.

His research program involves polymer research and currently encompasses projects in materials chemistry, including macromolecular chirality, optical switches and molecular machines.
Novak said teaching is his great passion.

“There are few times in life when you can truly have an impact on someone, and I find teaching to be an incredibly rewarding experience,” Novak said. “I believe very strongly in the university system. Over the last millennia, modern universities have played a pivotal role in the progress of human understanding of the world around us.”

He said he prides himself on making even the most difficult subjects fun and understandable for students. To that end, he was selected several times as a “most-loved professor” at North Carolina State University, where he worked from 1998 to 2011.

Born in Flint, Michigan and raised in Southern California, Novak joined the U.S. Army for a five-year stint before enrolling in California State University, Northridge. He graduated summa cum laude in 1983 and obtained his master’s degree in chemistry from the same institution. Novak earned his doctoral degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1989.

He began his teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1993, he joined the University of Massachusetts in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering before moving in 1998 to North Carolina State University, where he was a Distinguished University Professor. During his time in Massachusetts, Novak was awarded the ACS Carl S. Marvel Creative Polymer Chemistry Award.

Outside the realm of research, Novak has a particular interest in scuba diving, particularly deep-water wreck diving.