| Number 28 |
John L. Burmeister, Editor |
August, 2001 |
ADDITIONAL FACULTY/STAFF ACTIVITIES AND AWARDS
Asst. Profs. Brian J. Bahnson and Yong Duan are two
of the primary beneficiaries, along with assistant professors Jeremy
S. Edwards and Anne S. Robinson (wife of newly-minted Asst. Prof.
Clifford Robinson) [both CHEG], and Ulhas P. Naik [BISC], of
a $6.8M NIH grant to create a Center for Biomedical Research Excellence
at the U of D. The grant, according to PI Prof. Abraham Lenhoff
[CHEG], will be used primarily to support young faculty.
Dr. Shi (Steve) Bai (NMR spectroscopist), Dr. Cherie
R. Dotson (Director of the NUCLEUS Program), Mr. James
M. Farmer (Chemistry Storeroom Manager) and Ms. Barbara
E. Vaughn (Chemistry Librarian) were selected as recipients
of 2000 UD Professional/Salaried Staff Merit Awards (bais@udel.edu),
(cdotson@udel.edu), (farmer@udel.edu),
(bvaughn@udel.edu).
Dr. Henry Blount (FAC 70-84) is an unopposed candidate
for the position of councilor of the ACS Division of Analytical
Chemisty.
Mr. Ralph Booth (VIS FAC), retired professor and chairman
of the Davis and Elkins College Chemistry Department, apparently
doesn't know the meaning of the word "retirement". Ralph has continued
to teach at D&E and at West Virginia Wesleyan College. In addition,
Ralph is the current chairman of his local ACS Section and is
secretary of the West Virginia Academy of Science. He points out
that our 2001 CHEM/BIOC Graduation Convocation speaker, Tony
Kossiakoff (PhD73), was one of three D&E alumni whose careers
were profiled in this year's fund raising letter from D&E's president.
(rbooth@citynet.net)
Prof. Thomas B. Brill served as presenter and chair at
the International Conference of the Institut für Chemische
Technologie in Germany in July. Tom published an invited feature
article in J. Phys. Chem. last spring.
Prof. Roberta F. Colman is the current chair of the ACS
Division of Biological Chemistry.
Prof. Dennis H. Evans spent two weeks last May as visiting
professor at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where he presented
a series of lectures on the use of digital simulation in mechanistic
organic electrochemistry.
Asst. Prof. Susan E. Groh experienced a watershed year.
Along with Asso. Prof. Deborah E. Allen (BISC) and Dr. Barbara
J. Duch (Asso. Director of the Center for Mathematics and Science
Education Resources), she co-edited a text on "The Power of Problem-Based
Learning: A Practical How To for Teaching Undergraduate Courses
in Any Discipline", published by Stylus Publishing Co. The book
has received national attention, including a lengthy article in
the Chronicle of Higher Education. Sue was a member of
the Problem-Based Learning Clearinghouse team that received a
2001 U of D Innovation Award. Other team members were Eric Abbott,
Carl Jacobson, Joy Lynam, and Maria Mullin (all Information Technologies/Management
Information Services), Deborah Allen, Gretchen Bauer (Political
Science and International Relations), Barbara Duch, Sherry Kitto
(Plant and Soil Sciences), Elizabeth Lieux (Nutrition and Dietetics),
and George Watson (Physics and Astronomy). Sue, along with George
Watson, Barbara Duch, Deborah Allen, and fellow PBL pioneer Prof.
Harold White, organized and led a special session of the U
of D's Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education in June
for 27 representatives of FORMASUP, a consortium of educators
and administrators from universities and schools, as well as representatives
of trade unions and industry, in northwest France. Finally, she
has been appointed as faculty advisor to the UD chapter of Alpha
Lambda Delta, the national freshman honor society.
Prof. Murray V. Johnston shared the 2001 College of Arts
and Science Outstanding Scholar Award with Prof. Paul D. Amer
(Computer and Information Sciences).
Asst Prof. John T. Koh also had a year to remember. His
grant proposal received the highest score at the NIH's BNP study
section. Two of his published studies were highlighted in C&E
News. The first study, carried out with graduate students
Federico G. Kruz and Kristian H. Link (J. Am.
Chem. Soc., published 8/23/00 ASAP (http://pubs.acs.org/journals/jacsat/index.html)),
demonstrated how "light sheds light on gene expression" [C&E
News, p. 23, 9/11/00]. The second (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 123,
1521[2001]) described his group's synthesis of a thyroid analog
molecule that selectively activates the human mutant hormone receptor
beta (hTR ) [C&E News, p. 37, 2/26/01]. Small wonder, then,
that John gave ca. 20 invited lectures this past year, and has
been elected the co-chair for the 2003 Bioorganic Gordon Conference.
Dr. Albert Matlack (ADJ PROF) is the author of Introduction
to Green Chemistry, recently published by Marcel Dekker. The
text has more than 5000 references. Al, formerly a research chemist
at the Hercules Research Center, has taught a course on Green
Chemistry in our Department since 1995. An article on the class
appeared in the 2/99 issue of the journal Green Chemistry.
He holds more than 130 U.S. and foreign patents, is a Fellow of
the AAAS, and is the current president of the Society of Natural
History of Delaware.
Asso. Prof. Eugene G. Mueller also had the results of
his mutation study on IscS, which showed that it provides sulfur
for other purposes, e.g., thiolating certain forms of transfer
RNAs and for the synthesis of the vitamin thiamin, spotlighted
in a feature article on "Iron-Sulfur Proteins" published in C&E
News (p. 44, 11/20/00).
Prof. M. S. Burnaby Munson received the 2000 Alpha Lambda
Delta Excellence-in-Teaching Award (also won twice previously
by Asst. Prof. Susan Groh).
Victoria Orner (1st NUCLEUS DIR.) and her
husband, Bradley, are the proud parents of their second child
(first son), Bryce Thomas, who weighed in at 7 lbs., 15 ozs. on
April 16, 2001.
Prof. Garry A. Rechnitz, now Professor Emeritus at the
University of Hawaii, was honored, on the occasion of his 65th
birthday, with a dedicated special issue of Electroanalysis
(12, No. 16 [2000]). The forward to the issue (p. 1249)
was written by one of Garry's former students, Mark Meyerhoff,
now a professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan.
Prof. Arnold L. Rheingold continued to chalk up some
extraordinary milestones. A full-day symposium in his honor was
organized at last August's National ACS Meeting in Washington,
DC. The program consisted of 19 presentations, all given by collaborators
of Arnie. At this "Arnie Roast", Tony DiMaio (PhD89), one
of Arnie's doctoral students, presented these impressive statistics:
since 1969, Arnie has authored or co-authored 1,288 scientific
publications with 1,501 co-authors at 142 institutions published
in 98 journals listed in 39 separate Chemical Abstracts categories!
(Arnie's publication count has subsequently passed the 1300 mark.)
Small wonder, then, that the Institute for Scientific Information
has determined that he was the eighth most-cited chemical author
in the world during the period 1981-1997, with a staggering total
of 11,317 cites. (For those who are curious, the chemists ahead
of him in the list were Bax, Pople, Schleyer, Ernst, Whitesides,
Schaefer, and Huffman.) A councilor of the ACS Division of Inorganic
Chemistry since 1998, Arnie has been elected Chairman of the Division
for 2002. He was recently awarded a $170K grant by NSF to update
the facilities of his X-ray laboratory. In addition to continuing
in his third 3-year term on the editorial board of Organometallics,
he has been appointed to the editorial boards of Inorganic
Chemistry and Polyhedron. The Inorganic Chemistry
editorial board will have a pronounced U of D flavor, since Asso.
Prof. Charles G. Riordan is also a board member.
Dr. Mario Sartori (RES ASSO) died this past February
at the ripe old age of 97. Following his retirement from DuPont,
after a long and distinguished career, Mario became a research
associate of the late Prof. Seymour Yolles, and was the
motivating force behind Sy's research program in the area of sustained
release drug delivery systems.
Asso. Prof. Kathryn C. Scantlebury spent the past year
as a rotator at NSF's Education Directorate.
Asst. Prof. Joel P. Schneider has been awarded a PRF
Type G young faculty grant.
Dr. Swiatoslaw (Jerry) Trofimenko (Visiting Scholar)
has received plaudits for his recently published book "Scorpionates
- the Coordination Chemistry of Polypyrazolylborate Ligands" in
the form of two extremely favorable book reviews (J. Am. Chem.
Soc., 122, 5670 (2000); Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 39,
2559 [2000]). The latter review even had a catchy title of its
own: "Sting in the Tale!".
Perseverance has paid off for Asso. Prof. Emeritus Conrad
N. Trumbore. After ca. 10 years of effort, he and his research
associates (Dr. Robert S. Ehrlich and Ms. Yisraela N.
Myers) were finally able to see the results of their study
of changes in DNA conformation induced by gamma irradiation in
the presence of copper published (Radiat. Res., 155, 453
[2001]). This, in turn, led to the work's being highlighted in
C&E News (p. 31, 4/9/01).
Prof. Harold B. White was one of the organizers of the
symposium on "Training New Graduate Students to be TA's" at the
Orlando meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology.
Asst. Prof. James A. Wingrave is the editor of Oxide
Surfaces, just published by Marcel Dekker, Inc. (www.dekker.com)
Prof. Mary J. Wirth is a member of the National Committee
on the Advancement of Women Chemists. She, along with her graduate
students Derrick Swinton and Melody Ludes, represented
the American Chemical Society on Capitol Hill this past June.
They met with staff members for Senator Thomas Carper (DE), and
Congressmen Mike Castle (DE), Gilchrest, Lobiondo and Coyne to
discuss why it is important to increase NSF's budget. The meeting
was part of an effort organized by the National Coalition on Science
Funding, of which the ACS is a member.
Prof. Emeritus John C. Wriston published a thoughtful,
reasoned defense of the academic tenure system, "The Other Side
of Tenure", in The Review. The editorial was written in
response to a scathing, student-authored attack on tenure that
had been published earlier this year in The Review (the
U of D student newspaper).
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