Sanford Asher received his B.A. in chemistry at the University of Missouri, St. Louis in 1971 and completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1977. Dr. Asher was a Research Fellow in Applied Physics at Harvard University between 1977 and 1980, and in 1980 he became Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. He is now Distinguished Professor of Chemistry there.

He is the recipient of the 2016 SAS Honorary Membership Award, 2016 Society of Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP) Award in Analytical Chemistry, 2015 FACCS Charles Mann Award in Applied Raman Spectroscopy, the 2011 Charles E. Kaufman Award and the 2008 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award. He became a Fellow of the Society of Applied Spectroscopy in 2007, and received the Sigi Ziering Award from the American Society of Clinical Chemistry in 2005. He won the 2002 Ellis R. Lippincott Award from OSA, the Pittsburgh Technology Council EnterPrize Award in 2000, the Coblentz Society’s Bomem-Michelson Award in 1999, and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy’s Lester W. Strock Award in 1998, the University of Pittsburgh’s Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award in 1996, the American Chemical Society Award in Spectrochemical Analysis in 1994, the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award in 1984, and an NIH Career Development Award in 1984.