Chemistry

“Distinguished Professor George Christou has been selected to receive the 2019 Award in Inorganic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society “for his pioneering work in magnetic metal-oxo clusters and discovery of numerous single-molecule magnets, many exhibiting unprecedented physical properties important to new 21st century technologies”. He will receive a monetary prize and certificate at the 2019 ACS national meeting in Orlando, Florida, on March 31 – April 4, during which there will also be a one-day award symposium in his honor. The ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry is given every year to recognize “…outstanding research in the preparation, properties, reactions, or structure of inorganic substances. Special consideration (is) given to independence of thought and originality.” Prof. Christou’s research is in synthetic and physical-inorganic chemistry of the transition metals, and spans molecular nanomagnetism, bioinorganic chemistry, and supramolecular chemistry.”

“Crow Professor and Chair Lisa McElwee-White has been selected to receive the 2019 Francis P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society for her “significant contributions to inorganic/organic nanotechnology, her service as a mentor and teacher among a diversity of students, and her elevation of the public image of chemistry”. She will receive a monetary prize and certificate at the 2019 ACS national meeting in Orlando, Florida, on March 31 – April 4, during which she will present an award address in the Division of Inorganic Chemistry and attend a one and a half day award symposium in her honor. The medal itself will be presented at the Women Chemists’ Committee luncheon. Prof. McElwee-White’s research is in synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry with applications in the deposition of inorganic films and nanostructures.

Congratulations to Prof. Coray Colina for winning the 2019 PMSE Co-op Research Award! She will be recognized at the Spring 2019 meeting of ACS.

This award recognizes and encourages “sustained cooperative research between industrial and academic or industrial and national laboratory scientists. The cooperative research must be of significant importance to polymer science and technology.” The winning team comprises representatives from NIST, Penn State and DOW for their work on Ultrathin Molecular-Layer-by-Layer Polyamide Membranes.

“Congratulations to Wenxiao Guo from Wei group for winning the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award. The SCGSR award is in recognition of outstanding academic accomplishments and potential to make important contributions to the mission of the DOE Office of Science. Written research proposals are submitted and reviewed by the program committee, and awardees are selected based on the merit of their proposed research. The SCGSR program provides outstanding U.S. graduate students with opportunities to pursue part of their graduate thesis research at a DOE laboratory/facility in areas that address scientific challenges central to the Office of Science mission. Wenxiao was one of the 47 national awardees.”

Daniel Savin, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society. His name was included in the 2018 list of new ACS Fellows published in July in C&E News, and he attended a ceremony for new Fellows on August 20th at the ACS national meeting in Boston. He was recognized for, “Outstanding contributions to the field of polymer physical chemistry, using light scattering for the solution characterization of self-assembling biomaterials and hybrid nanoparticles,” and for, “Outstanding service to the ACS and the Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering through education leadership, community outreach, and promotion of scientific literacy.”

The purpose of the ACS Fellows program is to recognize and honor ACS members for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession, and the Society. There are only about 1,100 ACS Fellows among the society’s full membership of more than 157,000. He joins Profs. Bartlett, Christou, Dolbier, McElwee-White, Roitberg, and Wagener as ACS Fellows from the UF Department of Chemistry.

The Department of Energy has awarded an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) to UF. The application, spearheaded by UF physics professor, Hai-Ping Cheng, is funded at the level of $10.5M over four years. DOE awarded 42 new EFRC?s in its latest solicitation, and UF?s was the only one led by an institution in Florida; it becomes one of only two centers in the whole state. It is called the Center for Molecular Magnetic Quantum Materials (M2QM), and began officially on August 1, 2018. The center involves UF Chemistry (George Christou, John Stanton), Physics (Hai-Ping Cheng, Art Hebard, Neil Sullivan, Samuel Trickey, Xiaoguang Zhang), and MSE (Richard Hennig), as well as Caltech, the NHMFL (FSU and Los Alamos National Lab), and UCF. EFRC?s are established to target the DOE Office of Science?s basic research aims, which are to develop future technologies for the grand challenges of an energy-demanding world. M2QM targets quantum magnetic materials at the molecular scale, i.e., nanoscale magnetic materials possessing various exotic quantum properties important to new 21st century technologies, including quantum tunneling of magnetization, and quantum superposition and entanglement states.

We are pleased to announce that the 2018 M. A. Battiste Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, sponsored by Petra Research, was awarded to Eddie Laguna. The award recognizes excellence in synthetic organic chemistry by a 3rd year graduate student who has completed their oral qualifying examination. Eddie?s work is focused on the design and synthesis of biologically-active natural product analogues for their application in autoimmune disease treatments. Congratulations Eddie!

The W. M. Jones Award for Originality and Creativity was endowed by Emeritus Professor William (“Bill”) M. Jones and each year acknowledges an original research proposal idea of a graduate student in the Organic, Inorganic, or Biochemistry Division. The award is judged based on three criteria: originality and impact of the scientific idea, quality and clarity of a short written document, and quality and format of an oral presentation/defense. The Award Committee is pleased to announce Eddie Laguna and Georg Scheutz as the winners of the 2018 W. M. Jones Award for Originality and Creativity. Congratulations Eddie and Georg!

The William R. & Arlene F. Ruegamer Scholarship Fund recognizes overall excellence in biochemistry research. We are pleased to announce that the recipient of this year’s Ruegamer Biochemistry Awards is Prabhanshu Tripathi. Prabhanshu is a member of Prof. Bruner’s research group and studies the self-resistance mechanism of bacteria linked with colorectal cancer. Congratulations Prabhanshu!