Green Mountain Local Section
2006 Report
Officers 2006
Chair..................................... Fiona Case (Fiona's Website)
Secretary................................................. Michele Johnson
Treasurer...................................................... Beth Medeiros
Councilor..................... Willem Leenstra (Willem's Website)
Alternate Councilor.............. Martin Case (Martin's Website)
Committee Chairs
Awards....................................................................... Michele Johnson
PR/Web Master................................................................... Fiona Case
Education ....................................Timothy Deschaines (Tim's Website)
Government Affairs Committee..........Sarah Locknar (Sarah's Website)
Newsletter Editor........................................................ Willem Leenstra
UVM Women's Chemisty Group (ACS WCC)..........................Fiona Case
ACS Green Mountain Local Section Events 2006
- March: The Vermont Math and Science Fair
Photos of our award winners are here
- Our April Meeting: Chemistry and Industry, A visit by Dr. Chris Hollinsed, Director of the ACS Petroleum Research Fund
Chris generously offered to stay for Wednesday morning to meet with UVM faculty members before heading over the lake for an evening event with our neighbors in the Northern New York ACS Local Section. By then the sun was shining - it was a lovely Spring day!
- Our May Meeting: Chemistry and Politics
More information about the meeting here.
More information about the Government Affairs Committee here.
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Our June Meeting: Chemistry and Publishing
Dinner with Allison Doerr assistant editor of Nature Methods at Tully and Maries. Following her stimulating presentation at Middlebury College.
Allison also met with members of the UVM Women's chemistry group:
Allison discusses alternative chemistry careers with members of the UVM Women's chemistry group (at the Burlington Waterfront)
- Our
August Meeting: Chemistry
and Wine
We discussed wine making, toured the Snow Farm Vineyard and tasted their products, and then enjoyed an out-door buffet dinner with our neighbors from the ACS Northern New York Local Section.
- Our September meeting: Sources
for Chemicals in the 21st Century.
The Preparation of Polymers and Plastics from Forest Products
The Age of Petroleum is coming to an end and as it does, carbon, the fundamental building block of plastics, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, will have to be obtained from another source. The most easily available as well as renewable supply of carbon is biomass; the trees, shrubs, and foliage around us. Meeting society’s needs from trees requires that new chemistry and technology be invented to convert plant mass into the industrial supplies, consumer goods, and drugs we use and portions of that new chemistry was discussed at our meeting on the evening of Wednesday September 6th, hosted by the Department of Chemisty and Biochemistry Norwich University.
The speaker for the meeting, John Meister, is a research scientist and Director of the Forest Products Research Center, an environmental center in Albuquerque, New Mexico supported by private donations and foundation research grants. The Center, under his guidance, is developing environmentally compatible, sustainable technologies for the use of our forests. The research lab where these technologies are developed is located within Sandia National Laboratories.
Dr. Meister described new methods to make chemicals and plastics from wood and show samples of new products being made from wood. The talk was a guide to the future of chemistry as we leave the Age of Petroleum and enter the Age of Biomass.
- September: Our section received a chemluminary award
Our local
section received a ChemLuminary award for our 2005
Periodic Table Contest. The award was presented at the
ACS National Meeting in San Franciso.
Beth, Fiona, Martin and Willem danced the night away and
celebrated this achievement at the Awards
Party.
- November Meeting: Meet the New Vermont Chemistry Faculty!
Seven
chemists have joined the faculties at Vermont universities and colleges
over the last two years. We met most of them at our LS meeting on
Thursday, November 30 and heard about their
research and teaching.
| Matthias
Brewer Synthetic Organic Chemistry, University of Vermont Matthias received his Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he studied with Professor Daniel H. Rich. He was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of California at Irvine, where he worked with Professor Larry E. Overman. He joined the faculty at the University of Vermont in 2005. He described the research he and his group are carrying out centered on the development of new reaction methodology and its application to the synthesis of complex organic molecules. |
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| Molly S
Costanza-Robinson Environmental Chemistry, Middlebury College Molly Costanza-Robinson received a B.S. with Distinction from University of Wisconsin--Madison in Chemistry and German Literature in 1996 and a Ph.D. from The University of Arizona in Soil, Water and Environmental Science with Analytical Chemistry minor in 2001. During her undergraduate time, she also spent 6 months working at Argonne National Laboratory in the Environmental Research Division in the labs of Paul Doskey and Joseph Aldstadt and a year studying abroad at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Postdoctoral work at Northern Arizona University Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry included conducting arsenic research in the lab of Richard Foust, teaching a variety of courses, co-directing the National Science Foundation funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Environmental Science, and co-authoring a textbook on scientific writing “Write Like a Chemist”. Her interests include environmental science, environmental chemistry, contaminant transport and remediation, and scientific writing. Molly is also committed to enhancing scientific literacy among non-science majors. |
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| Tim
Deschaines Analytical Chemistry, Middlebury College Tim Deschaines obtained his B.A. in Chemistry from Colorado College, his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Wyoming, did Postdoctoral Research at the Photonics Center at Boston University. He worked briefly for instrument manufacturer Raman Systems, then based near Boston. Before coming to Middlebury he was a Lecturer at the University of New Hampshire for four years. Tim told us about his teaching and research interestes, and also shared his interest in Alchemy! Tim is the ACS Green Mountain Local Section chair-elect for 2007 |
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| Margaret
Daugherty Biochemistry, Middlebury College Peggy obtained her Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. in 1994 where she investigated the role of the Bohr Effect in the molecular mechanism of cooperativity in hemoglobin. Her first postdoctoral position was with Terrence G. Oas at Duke University Medical School where she researched issues relating to the stability and folding rates of proteins. Her second postdoctoral position was with Michael G. Fried at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine where she became interested in the regulation of eukaryotic gene transcription. Other research projects at Penn State involved investigating the molecular basis of the protein-protein interactions involved in blood coagulation and investigating the role of osmolytes in protein stability. She was at UVM from 2000 – 2005 and then moved to Middlebury. |
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| Brian Kyte Organic Chemistry, St. Michaels College Brian earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Austin Peay State University in 1998, while serving from 1995 to 2003 in the Army Reserve. Earned his doctorate in chemistry (biochemistry) in 2003 from the University of Florida. And then was a visiting assistant professor at Eckerd College in Saint Petersburg, Fla. Press release: “I love teaching—I could have stayed where I was—but the facilities, the research support and the Burlington area really drew me to Saint Michael's College” Brian told us about the research he is doing using enzymes to enable greener synthesis of important chemical species. |
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| Rory
Waterman Inorganic Chemistry, University of Vermont Rory earned his Ph.D. in 2004 from The University of Chicago as a student of Gregory L. Hillhouse. He conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratories of T. Don Tilley at the University of California, Berkeley as a Miller Research Fellow before joining the chemistry department at UVM just a couple of months ago. Research in the Waterman group applies the synthesis of novel inorganic and organometallic systems to define new reactivity and catalysis. |
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| Natalia
Bank Norwich University Natalia was unable to join us at the meeting, but some of us met her earlier in the year at the Vermont Math and Science Fair |
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- December: Holiday party and awards presentations:
The
ACS Green Mountain
Local Section recognizes and thanks Willem Leenstra for his many
contributions to the section. Michele Johnson presented Willem with the
2006 Emerald Award at our Local Section Holiday party on December 14th
Happy Birthday to the FDA
Report from 2005 - photos and descriptions of all our 2005 activities are linked from here!
About the ACS Green Mountain Local Section:
About the ACS Green Mountain Local Section:
Vermont is one of the smallest
states in the USA, fewer than 10,000 square miles in size, but we have
plenty of space because the state also has a small population. Only
about one U.S. citizen in 500 lives in Vermont; the only "large" city
Burlington, with a population of just under 40,000, would be considered
a town in another state, or mearly a neighborhood in Los Angeles, New
York or Chicago (1)
. It is perhaps
surprising, then, to learn that the ACS Green Mountain Local Section,
which covers Vermont, is not one of the smallest ACS sections. We have
more than 200 members which puts us in the "medium small" size
category. There are several factors that may contribute to this.
Although Vermont has a deserved reputation as a rural state we have one
of the best educated populations and we do have a small number of
companies that employ chemists including IBM, Omya, General
Dynamics, and Ben and Jerry's! Vermont is recognized as a good
retirement location, more than 25% of the ACS Green Mountain Local
Section are emeritus or retired members. Vermont also has more colleges
per capita than any other state (2)
and of
those reporting their job title or nature of business in the ACS Green
Mountain Local Section membership rosters (70%) almost half are working
or studying at the University of Vermont or at one of the 4-year
univerities or colleges.