DETROIT -- Joel S. Miller, chemistry professor and researcher at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award from Wayne State University during commencement ceremonies Thursday, Dec. 17, in Detroit's Cobo Arena.

Miller is a leading authority on molecular-based magnets and conducting polymers, he has developed a super-strong magnet made of molecules based on polymers rather than metals.

He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Wayne State in 1967. He earned his doctoral degree at UCLA . Following post-doctoral work at Stanford, he worked for a number of major corporations, including Xerox, Occidental Research and the Advanced Materials Science Laboratory at Du Pont.

Before joining the full-time faculty at the University of Utah in 1993,Miller was visiting professor at the University of California-Irvine, University of Pennsylvania and Universite de Paris-Sud. He also held the prestigious William Manchot research professorship at the Technical University of Munich and was visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

More than 3,200 students make up WSU's winter graduating class.