 pring semester has ended, we’ve celebrated our students’ success at graduation and convocation ceremonies, and we are settling back into a more reflective mood, thinking about the past academic year and what we have to look forward to this summer. That isn’t to say that our pace is slowing, but rather that the department is focusing on summer research and classes and taking time to repair and prepare for the fall semester. Summer is less structured than the academic year, but our activity level remains high and innovative..
This spring, the department graduated 72 students overall, including three with doctoral and two with masters degrees in chemistry and 67 undergraduate students awarded either bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degrees in chemistry, biochemistry, medicinal chemistry or environmental chemistry. A good fraction of these students (53%) are choosing to proceed to graduate schools in chemistry, materials science, earth science, law, medicine, dentistry, public health and pharmacy. Others have either found or are seeking employment. The names of our spring graduates and the degrees awarded can be found on the newsletter page linked to New Graduates.
Our students were also well recognized, by local, national and international prizes and grants, for their commitment to their education and to the missions that they have adopted. We celebrated their awards in late April and these are also listed in this newsletter (follow the links to Annual Awards and News Flash). There are too many to acknowledge in this short article, but I can’t resist bragging about some of them because they indicate the high quality characteristic of our department. For instance, the Goldwater Scholarships are given to more than three hundred students nationally for their academic excellence and their early career promise in the natural sciences, math and engineering. Of these, four undergraduates at Arizona universities were named Goldwater scholars; of these, three so honored were at ASU; and of these, two were students of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. We congratulate with pride Charlene Bashore and Lara Cardy for this spectacular award. Another example is Ke Wu who won an around-the-world study grant from the Circumnavigators Club Foundation. In another example, graduate student Gabrielle Malo received a “Down to Earth” award from the National Science Foundation, for students who are dedicated to training our next generation of scientists and engineers currently in K-to-12 grade schools.
Our faculty and staff have also been active and well recognized. This past academic year has been exceptional in the number of publications our faculty has placed in the premier science journals Science and Nature. Since our last newsletter, Professor Giovanna Ghirlanda was invited to evaluate, in the “News and Views” section of Nature, a current article on harnessing enzymatic reactions for non-biological enterprises. Professor Ariel Anbar published two articles in Science on his work harnessing isotope chemistry to unravel the geological history of our climate. He also was awarded a substantial NASA grant for studying mineral loss in the bones of astronauts residing in space for long periods of time. Austen Angell, Jeff Yarger and coworkers reported in Nature the very first production of a “glass” from a monatomic liquid. Michael O’Keeffe and his coworkers continued an impressive record of work on open framework solids, one of their papers garnering the “paper of the year” mantle from the AAAS. Their most recent exploits aim at sequestering carbon dioxide in solid structures as part of a global project to ameliorate the effects of burning fossil fuels. Devens Gust, and his coworkers in the U.K., demonstrated the ability of weak magnetic fields to orient organic molecules of complex shapes. This demonstrated the feasibility of the conjecture that molecules, interacting with the earth’s magnetic field, could serve as chemical compasses for migrating birds. These are but a few examples of the exciting research happenings in the department. For more information, I refer you to the links found in Research Highlights.
There is much more to come this summer on our research agenda and our planning of new teaching innovations for next fall. A taste of the latter is described in the link to New Renovation, which will be described more fully in our next newsletter in the early fall semester.
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Bill Petuskey |
In the meantime, I wish you all well for this summer and invite you to let us know what you are doing and to share your experiences on our web site. We very much want to strengthen our community of alumni, friends, students, faculty and staff. I hope that you will welcome this effort and help us in continuing to build a top flight Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
With best regards,
Bill Petuskey
Chair and Professor
Chemistry and Biochemistry
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