"This award is important because it is the culmination of my work over a 35-year career at Auburn; it recognizes the work of the many graduate students whom I have had the honor to mentor."

After graduating from Auburn University in 1964 and earning a doctorate at The University of Texas at Austin, S. D. Worley conducted post-doctoral research on atmospheric kinetics at the Johnson Spacecraft Center in Houston. He returned to Auburn in 1974, where he taught and performed research for 35 years, spanning several fields including photoelectron spectroscopy, surface science, and antimicrobial materials and polymers. He supervised the research of 18 PhD students, 12 MS students, and 13 post-doctoral fellows and received several university awards for teaching and research. In 2004, Worley was named the Stone Award winner as Outstanding Chemist in the Southeast for the Piedmont, N.C., American Chemical Society section. He authored more than 250 journal publications and holds more than 40 patents on antimicrobial technology. One of his and his students' inventions was commercialized by the HaloSource Company in Seattle for disinfection of drinking water in developing nations. Worley is married to Karen and they have two sons, Christopher and Brian.