Additional Faculty/Staff Activities and Awards
Four CHEM/BIOC faculty and staff members were recognized for their service at the University’s annual Service Awards Dinner on 5/15/07: Professor Harold White (35 years), Professor Cecil Dybowski (30 years), Educational Specialist Dana Chatellier (MA83) (20 years, during which time he has taught chemistry courses at the U of D an incredible two hundred times!), and Dr. Bao-Zhu Yu (retired from her position as a Research Associate in Professor Mahendra Jain’s laboratory). Dr. Eugene J. Agnello (PT FAC) died on 9/27/06. Gene taught a number of courses in our Department immediately following his retirement from Hofstra University, where he had been a faculty member (1964-1990) and department chair for 10 years. Prior to that, he had been a medicinal chemist at Pfizer for 12 years (16 papers, 37 patents), following his post-doctoral work at the University of Illinois, Ph.D. at the University of Rochester (1950), and B.S. at Albany (NY) State College. [see C&E News, p.95, 11/20/06]. Dr. Michael Babich (FAC77-78) is the current Head of the Department of Chemistry at the Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne. Research Professor Robert Bach and his Post Doc, Dr. Olga Dmitrenko, have been honored by mention in the NCSA Access spring 2007 issue. They have taken full advantage of the Grid Chem technologies for their computational solutions in areas where their desktop system is not powerful enough to handle their calculations. Read more about it at: |
An illustration from a paper published by Professor Svilen Bobev and his post-doc, Dr. Shengquing Xia, was selected for the cover art for the 11/06 issue of the Journal of Solid State Chemistry. More importantly, Svilen and his wife, Asya, became a threesome with the birth of their son, Stephan (all 9 lbs, 10 oz. of him!) on 5/22/07. Professor Thomas Church (JOINT FAC), whose primary appointment is in the College of Marine and Earth Studies, has been named E.I. DuPont Professor of Marine Studies. Professor Douglas Doren has been appointed Interim Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences for the 2007-2008 academic year. The old(er) timers among you will be saddened to learn of the passing of John Ferrante, on July 21st, at age 80. John served as our Stockroom Manager and Departmental Purchasing Agent for 25 years, retiring in 1987. He really never retired, since, on leaving the U of D, he immediately assumed the position of Practice Administrator for HearSay Hearing Centers, where he worked until this past February. By any and all measures, this past academic year was a banner year for our former Chair, Professor Emeritus Jean Futrell (FAC 86-99), currently a Senior Battelle Fellow and Science Adviser in the Office of the Chief Research Officer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Jean’s impressive run began last October with a Lifetime Achievement in Science and Technology Award from PNNL. In early March, |
2007, he traveled to Bremen, Germany to receive the Wolfgang Pauli Award. Shortly thereafter, at the Chicago ACS Meeting, he received the Frank H. Field & Joe L. Franklin Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry – the premier MS award in the U.S. A Symposium in his honor on “From Reaction Dynamics to Peptide Sequencing” will be held at the Boston ACS Meeting. Finally, an entire issue of the International Journal of Mass Spectrometry is being dedicated in his honor. Professor Lila M. Gierasch (FAC 79-87), Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is one of 13 recipients of the 2006 NIH Director’s Award. This award will provide her with $2.5 M in direct costs over 5 years [C&E News, p. 55, 10/2/06]. Professor Pamela Green (JOINT FAC), Crawford H. Greenewalt Endowed Chair in Plant Molecular Biology, whose primary appointments are in the Colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Marine and Earth Studies, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest scientific society. Professor Emeritus Richard F. Heck (FAC71-89), and his wife have come full circle, and are, once again, living in the Philippines. Dr. Beaven Mandimutsira (Post-doc, 98-01, 03-06), is now a Research Chemist working in the area of new propylene oxide technology for the Lyondell Chemical Company, Newtown Square, PA. |
Professor Burnaby Munson has been selected as the recipient of the 2007 Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Fields of Analytical Chemistry by the Eastern Analytical Symposium and Exposition – the EAS’s premier award. Douglas A. Nixon Master Glass Technologist, has published a paper on “Enhance the Service: Eliminate the Competition” in Fusion: The Journal of the American Scientific Glassblowers Society, Vol. LIV (No.2), 25-27 (2007). Those wishing to access this interesting article electronically should use the following link: Professor Sandeep Patel has been selected by the ACS Division of Computers in Chemistry as one of four recipients of the Hewlett Packard Outstanding Junior Faculty Awards for fall, 2007. The Award will be presented to Sandeep during the Boston ACS Meeting. Dr. Richard Rebbert’s (FAC76-78, 82-83, 85-86), professional career has come full circle. He is now a Lecturer at Towson (MD) University. rrebbert@comcast.net Professor Arnold Rheingold (FAC84-03), now on the faculty at the University of California- |
San Diego, has achieved a degree of distinction matched by very few of his scientific contemporaries – an h-index of 71, which ranks him 114th among all living chemists. The h-index is a measure of research impact. A scientist’s h-index is the highest number of papers they have published which have each amassed at least that number of citations. In Arnie’s case, he has published 71 papers, each of which has generated at least 71 citations. For those of you who are curious, Professor George Whitesides (Harvard) is #1, with an H-index of 135. Professor Charles Riordan has begun a 4-year term as Secretary of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry. He has also been appointed to the Editorial Board of Dalton Transactions for a 3 year term. Professor Kate Scantlebury organized an extremely successful Chemistry Day for the state’s high school chemistry teachers at the U of D on 10/13/06. Presenters included Professors John Burmeister, Thomas Beebe, Svilen Bobev, John Koh, Douglas Doren, and Murray Johnston. She also succeeded in securing two $6 K scholarships for chemistry education majors from the Hach Scientific Foundation. |
Professor Douglass Taber was the lead speaker at a Society for Chemical Industry Symposium on “C-H Activation: Present and Future,” held at the AstraZeneca site in Loughborough, England on 4/26/07. He is the author of the textbook “Organic Synthesis: State of the Art 2003-2005,” recently published by John Wiley.
Professor Mary J. Wirth (FAC 86-04), Professor of Chemistry at the University of Arizonia, has received the 2006 Spectrochemical Analysis Award. A symposium in her honor was held at the 2006 San Francisco ACS Meeting. Jeanne E. Pemberton, Ph.D. (BS77), a professorial colleague of Mary’s at Arizona, was one of the presenters at the symposium. |