Catalyst Magazine V 4.1

SP/SU09

V 4.1Catalyst

Spring/Summer 2009 Volume 4 • Issue 1

COLLEGE OF CHEMISTRY • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

The extraordinary chemistryof the ordinaryThe pure water predicamentClear thinking about clear stuffOf gears and geckosA house on a big river

all text and photos by michael barnesunless otherwise noted.

for online versions of our publicationsplease see: chemistry.berkeley.edu

© 2009, College of Chemistry, University of California,

Berkeley

COLLEGE OF CHEMISTRYUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

deanRichard A. [email protected]

chair, department of chemistryMichael A. [email protected]

chair, department of chemical engineeringJeffrey A. [email protected]

acting assistant deanMindy Rex

510/642.9506; [email protected]

principal editorMichael Barnes


contributing editorKaren Elliott


alumni relations directorCamille M. Olufson


circulation coordinatorDorothy I. Read


designAlissar Rayes Design

printingUniversity of California Printing Services

Catalyst

ON THE COVER

A graphite rod is used to create a flangeon a molten glass tube in the College ofChemistry’s glassblowing lab.

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Spring/Summer 2009Volume 4 • Issue 1

c o n t e n t s

3 DEAN’S DESK

4 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING NEWS

5 CHEMISTRY NEWS

6 FACULTY PROFILE

8 THE EXTRAORDINARY CHEMISTRYOF THE ORDINARY10 THE PURE WATER PREDICAMENT

14 CLEAR THINKING ABOUT CLEAR STUFF

18 ALUMNUS PROFILE

23 COLLEGE OF CHEMISTRY UPDATES

24 UNIVERSITY UPDATES

25 CLASS NOTES

29 IN MEMORIAM

32 ’09 COMMENCEMENT

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This architect's rendition of the new HildebrandLibrary and Student Learning Center shows thestudy area and recitation rooms.

ROBER

THAY

ESARCHITEC

TS

Spring/Summer 2009 Catalyst

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d e a n ’ s d e s k

As my first year as dean approaches a close,I am pleased with how much we’ve accom-plished, despite the challenging Universitybudgetary and overall financial climate. Byworking together, our staff, faculty andstudents continue to find creative ways ofadvancing the educational and researchgoals of the College.

In my last column I expressed my strongcommitment to the renovation of our agingundergraduate teaching laboratories. Toprepare our students to tackle society’smost pressing problems—including energy,health and the environment—we must havemodern laboratories that enable cutting-edgecurriculum and instruction. Since morethan 50 percent of all Berkeley undergradu-ates take at least one laboratory course inthe College, we play a key role in providingscience education to Berkeley graduates.

I’m pleased to say that our lab renewal ini-tiative, “Chemical Sciences Instruction forthe 21st Century,” has led to a plan forflexible laboratory space that will serve theneeds of our program broadly and efficiently.Our initiative calls for rebuilding the under-graduate laboratories, as well as creatingnew recitation rooms for student discussions,seminars and group meetings. We’re now

Working together creatively

RICHARD A. MATHIESDean and Gilbert N. LewisProfessor

engaged in a fundraising effort that willenable the $30 million lab-renewal project—a task that has been aided by ChancellorBirgeneau’s commitment to matchingdonations up to at least $5 million. Ourown faculty made multi-year commitmentstotaling more than one-third of a milliondollars. This generosity speaks volumesabout their dedication to improving ourundergraduate education. This summerwe’ll begin construction of the first groupof recitation rooms to create the HildebrandLibrary and Student Learning Center. Thecompletion of this first phase of the projectwill position us for the important laboratoryrenewal construction.

The ingenuity and productivity of our facultyresearch and teaching activities have alsobeen impressive. Most recently, Professorof Chemical Engineering and ChemistryBerend Smit was awarded $10 million overthe next five years from the U.S. Departmentof Energy to lead one of 46 new EnergyFrontiers Research Centers. He will focuson finding better ways to separate carbondioxide from power plant and natural gaswell emissions and store it permanentlyunderground. Assistant Professor ofChemistry Richmond Sarpong was one of14 young faculty members nationwide towin a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-ScholarAward. Associate Professor of ChemistryMatthew Francis was a recipient of thecampus’s highest honor for teaching, theDistinguished Teaching Award. Finally, Iam pleased to announce that our intellectualcommunity will be further enriched by thearrival of Ming Hammond (Ph.D. ’05,Chem), a new assistant professor in theDepartment of Chemistry, whose researchin chemical biology focuses on the regula-tory workings of RNA.

While recent events have been challenging,they have also led to opportunities in thisvery dynamic year in the life of the College.

While watching The Colbert Report recentlyI couldn’t help but guffaw at a self-depre-cating joke from Stephen Colbert: “I needa vacation because working thirty minutesa day is exhausting!” Like all good jokes,this one hints at a deeper truth.

During the summer the parents of incom-ing freshman get to spend an hour with aprofessor, asking questions about whatthey do. I am occasionally asked to holdthese “office hours” and the first questionI often hear from parents is, “How comeyou only teach three hours per week?” Thisquestion points to a profound public mis-understanding of the role of a professor ata modern research university. How shouldI respond to their question?

The primary role for a professor at UCBerkeley is the generation and applicationof new knowledge. In the chemical sciences,new knowledge derives from inspired fac-ulty leadership and mentorship of studentsin the research laboratory. A large fractionof ChemE teaching occurs in daily meetingsbetween faculty and graduate students.Professors spend much of their time in theapprenticeship relationship with thesestudents, honing precise scientific method-ology and critically analyzing originalresearch.

Faculty leadership carries with it the burdenof funding the students who generate newknowledge. Many parents have owned abusiness, and I use that experience toappeal to their sense of responsibility byasking, “Do you ever worry about makingpayroll?” They are often stunned to discoverthat some ChemE faculty members mustgenerate as much as $1 million per year tomeet the “payroll” and expenses for their lab,including the stipends and tuition for thegraduate students, the salaries of postdocsand the supplies and expenses of their lab.

These monies come from research contracts,grants and gifts that obligate the facultymember to write many 20+ page proposalseach year, persuade foundations and govern-ment agencies and deliver compellingresearch. The odds are daunting: the prob-ability of getting a regular grant from NSFin chemical engineering is about 1 in 22.

A professor at UC Berkeley is also calledon to disseminate that new knowledgethroughout the greater scholarly communityand to the general public. The 20th centurynotion of engineering professors staring attheir feet and mumbling to themselves isquaint (and the source of more than a fewgood jokes), but in fact the successfuldissemination of new knowledge requiresextraordinary communication skills.

c h e m i c a l e n g i n e e r i n g n e w s

College of Chemistry, UC Berkeley

Generating new knowledge

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JEFFREY A. REIMERChair, Department of Chemical Engineering,Warren and Katharine SchlingerDistinguished Professor

Your Berkeley ChemE faculty can also befound on NPR, The Colbert Report and theDiscovery Channel when they are not busywriting for professional journals, teachingand mentoring. They travel out of town todeliver invited colloquia where they muststand and deliver to the most exactingcritics—faculty members, postdocs, andstudents at institutions with extraordinaryscholarly reputations. Your ChemE facultyalso speak at national meetings where theaudience includes dozens (often hundreds)of professionals from all over the world.

As I type this document, we have finalizedthe teaching schedule for Fall 2009. Theteaching assignments of our four NationalAcademy members are worth noting.Professor Bell will be teaching ChE 150B(Transport Phenomenon); ProfessorBlanch will be teaching ChE 160 (ProcessDesign); Professors Iglesia and Newmanwill be teaching ChE 154, our lab course.The few hours per week that our under-graduates spend with them in these coursesrest on the apex of thousands of hoursspent generating, applying, and dissemi-nating new knowledge.

That is what I tell parents in the summer“office hours.”

by jeffrey a. reimerChemical engineeringprofessor Jay Keaslingappears with televisionhost Stephen Colbertof The Colbert Report.

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The last decade was a difficult one forscience on many levels. But that was thepast and the past is just that—it is behindus. In front of us is an optimistic andexciting future for science and for chem-istry, in particular.

There have been several strong signals fromthe Obama administration that things aregoing to be different. The president hasmade a number of very positive statementsabout the central role science would play inhis administration. Obama is following hiswords with action.

Notable examples include the appointmentof former Berkeley professor John Holdrenas the assistant to the president for science

and technology. Holdren will be a strongleader and advocate. The president alsoappointed our own Steve Chu, formerdirector of the Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory, to head the Department of Energy.Chu will lead us through the difficult butexciting task of charting our energy future.

These are strong signals about our newpresident’s commitment to science.However, the strongest signal of Obama’sthinking came on April 27th when headdressed the 146th annual meeting of the

MICHAEL A. MARLETTAChair, Department of Chemistry, Joel B. HildebrandDistinguished Professor, and Aldo DeBenedictisDistinguished Professor

National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Takethe time to watch and listen. A videorecording, audio recording and photos ofthe event are available at www.nasonline.organd on our College of Chemistry website atchem.berkeley.edu.

Obama is only the fourth president to speakto NAS. The others were John Kennedy,George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.Obama’s speech could very well be viewedas a call to arms. The time for complainingabout a lack of vision in our science policy,and the role science is playing in ourfuture, is over. Chemistry and chemistsshould be and will be in the middle of itall. So what did he say?

The president said, “The days of sciencetaking a back seat to ideology are over.” Hesaid that science was “more essential forour prosperity, our security, our health, andour environment than it has ever been,”and that he will make major investments—3 percent of the gross domestic product—in research and innovation.

The president also acknowledged the lackof funding for high-risk, high-returnresearch and the scarcity of federal supportfor researchers at the beginning of their

careers. He promised to help correct thisby doubling the budgets of the NationalScience Foundation, the Department ofEnergy’s Office of Science and the NationalInstitute of Standards and Technology.

So science is again on the front burner andthe heat has been turned up—on us. In hisspeech, Obama threw down the gauntlet toNAS members to “use their love andknowledge of science to inspire Americanstudents to pursue careers in science andengineering.” He urged those listening to“think about new and creative ways toengage young people in science and engi-neering, like science festivals, roboticscompetitions, and fairs that encourageyoung people to create, build, and invent—to be makers of things, not just consumersof things.”

What better way to revive our country?You, as alumni and supporters of theDepartment of Chemistry, can carry thischarge forward. In doing so you will benefitthe country, our young people and your-selves, and you will spread the influence ofthe chemistry department even further.Now that the heat is on, stay in the kitchenand cook something up!

by michael a. marletta

On the front burner

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, former Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was one of thedignitaries who attended President Obama’s speech to the National Academy of Sciences.


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If the first half of the 20th century wasdominated by advances in mechanicaldevices—electric motors, automobiles andairplanes—and the second half by micro-electronics—personal computers, cellphones and portable music players—the21st century may be shaped by devices thatare a mixture of both.

At UC Berkeley, chemical engineeringprofessor Roya Maboudian is helping todevelop micro- and nano-electromechanicalsystems (M/NEMS). Her research group isworking on nanoscale devices made fromnovel materials, tiny sensors that can surviveinside the cylinder of an internal combustionengine, miniature robots that mimic thewall-climbing ability of gecko lizards, andlow-cost water purification systems fordeveloping countries.

Maboudian is at home among chemical,electrical and mechanical engineers at avariety of campus interdisciplinary centerswith acronyms such as COINS, CITRIS,BSAC and CIEMS. It’s a career Maboudiandidn’t imagine for herself as a child inTehran, Iran, where she was born in 1962.She grew up enjoying math and sciences,but also history and literature, in particularpoetry. “There have been so many wonder-ful Persian poets over the centuries—Rumi, Khayyam, Saadi, just to name a few.”

After graduating from high school,Maboudian and her family left Iran forWashington, D.C., less than a year before theoverthrow of Iran’s shah. “I never thoughtwe would stay here for more than a fewyears,” says Maboudian, “but life has its ways.I still have family in Iran, including an oldersister, with whom I am in close contact.”

Maboudian earned her B.S. in electricalengineering at the Catholic University ofAmerica in Washington, D.C., in 1982. Shecompleted her Ph.D. in applied physics atCaltech in 1988. There she met her futurehusband and research collaborator Carlo

Carraro, who was finishing his Ph.D. incomputational physics.

After Caltech, Maboudian spent the years1988 to 1991 in a postdoc position atPennsylvania State University. She thenmoved to UC Santa Barbara, where shespent the next two years as an IBM researchfellow in the lab of chemical engineer,college alumnus and noted surface scien-tist Henry Weinberg (Ph.D. ’71, ChemE).She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1993.

Surface science is a broad topic thatspans many materials and technolo-gies. One area in which it plays apivotal role is in M/NEMS tech-nology. Surface phenomena thatmay be trivial in bulk materialsbecome serious at the nanoscale,since as size is reduced, higherproportions of the atoms are at thesurfaces. When the thickness of mov-ing parts is measured in nanometers,wear and friction are critical problems.“We need to understand surface interac-tions and tailor the surfaces to controlthese interactions,” says Maboudian, “soseveral members of our group are interestedin tribology, the study of adhesion, frictionand lubrication. Tribology comes from theGreek word, tribo, to rub.”

The dominant material in semiconductor-based technologies, such as solid-stateelectronics and M/NEMS, is silicon.Although silicon has excellent electronicsproperties, silicon surfaces are highlyreactive and don’t do well in extreme envi-ronments with high temperatures, highradiation and corrosive conditions.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a ceramic that doeshave high survivability, but it is a newmaterial with undeveloped potential forM/NEMS. “We’ve had 50 years of accumu-lated knowledge on how to work with sili-con,” says Maboudian. “With siliconcarbide there is still lots of work to be done

and lots to be discovered.My lab has demon-strated novelschemes to depositSiC in a thin filmform and to selec-tively etch it tocreate patterns and

devices. Now we areworking on tailoring its

properties, including the char-acteristics of its contact with metals andother materials. It’s exciting to work withnew materials for new applications.”

Sensors made from these new materialsare drawing the interest of federal fundingagencies and private firms. They havepotential as battlefield sensors, as corrosionsensors in oil wells and pipelines, and ascombustion sensors that can survive insidean automobile engine. Maboudian is devel-oping some of these applications in collab-oration with Al Pisano, chair and professorof mechanical engineering at Berkeley.

The Maboudian lab is also applying itssurface science knowledge and fabricationskills to a completely different area—synthetic fibers that mimic the setae, ornanoscale hairs, on the toes of geckos.Every square millimeter of a gecko’s foot-pad contains about 14,000 hair-like setae.These natural fibers allow the lizards toclimb on any surface, wet or dry, clean or

Of gears and geckosT H E R E S E A R C H O F R O Y A M A B O U D I A N

f a c u l t y p r o f i l e


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technology. It’s very helpful tohave collaborations with people like

Ron Fearing with different interests andbackgrounds.”

In the area of civil and environmentalengineering, the Maboudian lab is collabo-rating with Berkeley professor Kara Nelsonand Aquaya, a non-profit foundation in SanFrancisco. Aquaya is working to developinexpensive point-of-use water purificationsystems for low-income countries.

Says Maboudian, “More than a billon peoplelack clean drinking water, and millions,mostly children, die from unsafe drinkingwater and poor sanitation. To help fightthis problem, we are looking at the currenttechnology developed by Aquaya. We aretrying to understand and improve theantimicrobial coatings they have developed.We are grateful to the seed funding fromthe campus Sustainable Products andSolutions Program, funded by Dow, whichhas been instrumental in bringing Nelson,Aquaya and my lab together to work onthis important challenge.”

For now, Maboudian is grappling witha different sort of problem—learningGerman. She is on sabbatical at theLeibniz Institute for New Materials inSaarbrücken, Germany, about 60 milessoutheast of Luxembourg near the Frenchborder. Maboudian is in Saarbrückenwith her Italian-born husband and theirtwo daughters, ages eleven and three.

Says Maboudian, “Of everyone in the family,I am the least skilled in German. I ammanaging because everyone speaksEnglish in the institute and luckily mydaughters’ German has gotten to a pointthat they can translate for me.” The familywill return in the fall, and once back inBerkeley, Maboudian can return to leadingher research group as they grapple withmore familiar challenges—in English.

dirty, and at any angle.The finely dividedsetae on gecko toesrely on the intermole-cular attractionknown as van der

Waals force to givegeckos their amazing

climbing capabilities.

In collaboration with Berkeley electricalengineer and microrobot designer RonFearing, the Maboudian lab has fabricatednanofiber arrays of polypropylene andother polymers that exhibit many gecko-like adhesion characteristics. Potentialapplications include super-velcro adhesivesthat will cling to almost any surface, band-ages that don’t stick when removed, andadhesive tape that doesn’t get dirty or leaveresidues behind.

These adhesives are also being used byFearing to develop small robots that canclimb walls. Maboudian foresees the daywhen miniature robotic geckos loaded withM/NEMS sensors will be used for search-and-rescue operations such as crawlingthrough earthquake-damaged buildingslooking for survivors.

Says Maboudian, “For me, exciting problemsexist at the boundaries of disciplines. Givenmy background in chemical engineering,applied physics and electrical engineering,I enjoy interdisciplinary research. I find itvery fulfilling to discover or understand aphenomenon at a fundamental level, andthen use this knowledge to enable a new

UC Berkeley multidisciplinarynanotechnology researchcenters

center for information technologyresearch in the interest of societyCITRIS creates information technologysolutions for many of society’s most press-ing social, environmental and health-careproblems. Focus areas include nanofabrica-tion and wireless sensor systems. CITRISfosters collaborations among faculty mem-bers and students from four UC campuses(Berkeley, Davis, Merced and Santa Cruz)with researchers at over 60 corporations.

center of integratednanomechanical systemsThe goal of COINS is to develop and inte-grate cutting-edge nanotechnologies intoa versatile platform with various ultra-sensitive, ultra-selective, self-powering,mobile, wirelessly communicating detectors.The center strives for a range of M/NEMSadvances, from designing fundamentalbuilding blocks to integrating completeapplications.

center for interfacial engineeringof microelectromechanical systemsCIEMS is advancing the surface scienceand engineering of microstructural materials,coatings, and processes to enhance thecapabilities and performance of M/NEMS,through funding interdisciplinary, collabo-rative research projects at StanfordUniversity, UC Berkeley, Iowa StateUniversity and the University of Washington.

berkeley sensor & actuator centerBSAC is the National Science FoundationIndustry/University Cooperative ResearchCenter for Microsensors and Microactuators.BSAC conducts industry-relevant, inter-disciplinary research on micro- andnano-scale sensors, moving mechanicalelements, microfluidics, materials, andprocesses that combine integrated circuit,bio, and polymer technologies.

Roya Maboudian at the LeibnizInstitute for New Materials inSaarbrücken, Germany, where sheis on sabbatical. She is surroundedby images of polymer nanohairsthat her lab has developed to mimicthe adhesive properties of the setaeof gecko toes.

An intense drive to understandthe physical world

Theextraordinary

chemistryof the

ordinary

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Most people think water and glass are pretty ordinary examples of matter. Chemistry profes-sors Rich Saykally and David Chandler disagree. Water and glass are strange.

Water and glass are everyday stuff with special properties that make them important forhumankind. To make them even more useful requires a deeper understanding of their molec-ular structure. That understanding, as it turns out, is not easy to achieve.

Saykally and Chandler have spent many years independently developing experimental andtheoretical tools that can be applied to understanding water and glass. Recently, they havebegun to work together.

The two chemistry professors have very different backgrounds, personalities and expertise.Saykally is an experimentalist, raised in rural Wisconsin. Chandler is a theoretician, raised ina suburb on Long Island near New York City. Chandler prefers sweaters and sport coats.Saykally can usually be found in one of his many Hawaiian shirts. Saykally’s workshop is asprawling lab filled with lasers and vacuum pumps and optical benches. Chandler’s workshopis a quiet office with a pencil and pad of paper, and a computer lab downstairs.

The two share some similarities. As young men, both were drawn to athletics and music. ForSaykally it was football and rock guitar, for Chandler, tennis and classical and jazz piano. Bothare devoted family men, each with two daughters. And each one has a former student who isnow a Berkeley chemistry professor.

More than anything else, both have an intense drive to understand the physical world.Together with their former students, professors Ron Cohen and Phillip Geissler, they areworking to understand and describe water evaporation and condensation at the molecularlevel. This knowledge will help climate scientists predict how water vapor and cloud formationinfluence the earth’s climate.

As an experimentalist and a theoretician, Saykally and Chandler don’t occupy different realmsas much as complementary ones. Theories can provide clues that experiments must confirm,and experiments discover findings that require new theories to explain them.

Their work is one example of how the College of Chemistry brings together scientists withcomplementary knowledge and skills to produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

by michael barnes

Thepurewaterpredicament

ForRich Saykally,better water

requires betterunderstanding

of water

Rich Saykally has always been surrounded by water. He was born in1947 and raised in upstate Wisconsin, in the town of LakeTomahawk. It is a region where flat topography and plenty of snow-fall create a landscape dotted with thousands of small lakes. Hegrew up among the sleepy resorts that catered to fishermen whocame up from Chicago and other big cities during the summer.

As a child, Saykally took fresh water for granted. Today, he isnot so sure. “There is plenty of water out there—the oceans are fullof it,” says Saykally. “But drinkable water is another story. Right nowthere isn’t enough to go around, and the problem is getting worse.Water may be for the rest of the 21st century what oil is today.”

According to a recent United Nations report, “Water in aChangingWorld,” almost half of the world’s population will be livingin areas of acute water shortage by 2030. In addition to populationgrowth and the disruption of natural water sources by climatechange, other culprits that contribute to water shortages includehuman migration from the countryside to cities, rising meatconsumption and growing demand for ethanol biofuel.

The pending water crisis is creating a need for better purifica-tion and desalinization techniques. But not only is there a lack ofclean water, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of wateritself. Water, as it turns out, is very complicated at the molecularlevel. As one of the world’s most prolific innovators of spectroscopictechniques, Saykally has devoted a substantial part of his career tobetter understanding H2O.

Saykally’s scientific journey started in 1965, when he left LakeTomahawk for college at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire(from the French for “clear water”). “I had zero interest in a deskjob,” says Saykally, “but my mother had been an elementary schoolteacher, and she stressed the need for a good education so shewouldn’t have to support me!”

He began with forestry but soon discovered chemistry andswitched his major. He was a lab assistant during his first year.Then came his first organic chemistry class. “After that,” saysSaykally, “I temporarily became an English major.” He kept busy asa guitarist in a rock band and playing football, but he graduated in1970 with a B.S. in chemistry, after all.

Nothing in Saykally’s upbringing prepared him for what camenext—the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Like Berkeley,Madison was a center for student protests against the war inVietnam and Cambodia.

“It was the fall of 1970,” says Saykally, “and Madison was a warzone.” The Kent State shootings had occurred the previous May, andjust before Saykally arrived in August, a bomb exploded on theMadison campus, killing physics postdoc Robert Fassnacht.

MAXCHEN

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Saykally started with analytical chemistry, but after passing allthe requirements for the program, he switched to physical chemistryand earned his Ph.D. under Claude Woods in 1977. The subject ofhis dissertation was microwave spectroscopy of transient species.

Saykally continued to develop his skills in spectroscopy duringhis postdoc with the laser physics group at the National Institute ofStandards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, CO. “In retrospect, Icouldn’t have chosen a better place,” he says. “The lab was full of equip-ment and really talented people working on interesting problems.”

Saykally worked with K. M. Evenson, who was establishingbenchmarks based on precise measurements of the frequency andwavelength of laser light. Another colleague, John Lewis Hall, latershared the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics for his work at the Boulderlab in precision spectroscopy.

In 1979 Saykally became a faculty member at UC Berkeley’sCollege of Chemistry. He had been urged to consider Berkeley by

Stephen Leone, a col-league at the University ofColorado at Boulder and

NIST who had himself earnedhis chemistry Ph.D. at Berkeley with

Brad Moore in 1974. Leone was a “fantastic influ-ence,” says Saykally. Leone himself would return to the

College of Chemistry as a professor in 2002.At Berkeley, Saykally began a research program that has devel-

oped an astonishing array of spectroscopic techniques. His wide-ranging list of professional interests includes laser spectroscopy ofliquids, surfaces and clusters; synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy, fem-tosecond nonlinear optical spectroscopy and chemical reactions ofliquid surfaces; astrophysics and interstellar dust particles; nano-optics and nonlinear optical molecular imaging; and cavity ring-down and terahertz laser spectroscopy of clusters and ions.Although these techniques allow him to study many systems andphenomena, in recent years Saykally has been drawn back to water.

Water is common on our planet in all three phases—gas, liquidand solid. It has an unusual property in that the solid state is lessdense than its liquid state—so ice floats. That’s a good thing; other-wise many lakes, such as those where Saykally ice-fished as a child,would freeze solid from the bottom up in winter. Instead, ice formsa layer on top of lakes, allowing snowfall to accumulate and insulatethe fish and other aquatic life living below.

Another unusual property of water is that its molecules tend tostick together, giving water a relatively high boiling point. Water’shigh specific heat means that oceans and other large bodies of waterstore tremendous amounts of heat, helping to stabilize the planet’stemperature.

Water gets these unique “sticky” properties from hydrogenbonds. Because the angle between the two hydrogen atoms is about105 degrees, and because the oxygen atom pulls electrons awayfrom the hydrogen atoms, a water molecule is V-shaped and polar.A water molecule has a negative charge near the oxygen atom, anda positive charge near the hydrogen atoms. It is this polar nature ofthe water molecule that allows the rapidly oscillating field of amicrowave oven to force the water molecules to jiggle in unison,creating heat.

The opposite charges on the atoms of hydrogen and oxygenalso cause water molecules to be attracted to each other by hydrogenbonds. Saykally describes this by using a hands-and-feet model.“Think of your body as a water molecule,” says Saykally. “The oxygenmolecule is at your torso, which is strongly attached to the hydrogenatoms at your feet. In addition, your hands can act like the two

Chemistry professor Rich Saykally examines the water flowing downStrawberry Creek behind the College of Chemistry library.


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unshared pairs of electrons in oxygen and grab onto the hydrogenfeet of other water molecules through hydrogen bonds” (see imagebelow).

In 2004 a group of researchers proposed a radical revision ofthe accepted nature of water. According to Saykally, “The acceptedview was that in liquid water, just like in ice, most molecules wereconnected to four others via hydrogen bonds—nearly all hands andfeet were engaged. But in its liquid state, the network of water mol-ecules is random and lacks the long range crystalline pattern of ice.”

Writing in Science magazine, Anders Nilsson at the Stanfordlinear accelerator (SLAC) and co-workers argued that in liquid waterat room temperature, most hydrogen bonds are broken. On average,they argued, each water molecule is linked to only two other watermolecules via hydrogen bonds. In essence, water molecules formchains and rings where each watermolecule dangles a foot and a hand.

“If Nilsson’s group was correct,” says Saykally, “they would winthe Nobel Prize. But we were pretty sure they were wrong.” Whatfollowed was a flurry of papers, comments on papers, and responsesto comments on papers, by Saykally, Nilsson and others. When thedust settled, the consensus remained that in liquid water most mol-ecules are bonded to four others—all the hands and feet remainattached most of the time.

At first glance, these distinctions may seem unimportant.Water, however, is the solvent of life. How DNA replicates, howenzymes work, how proteins fold—all of these depend on theirinteraction with water. “If we don’t understand the subtleties ofwater itself,” Saykally points out, “we may miss some of the mostsubtle, but critical aspects of the chemistry of life.”

If the bulk properties of water are still controversial, even morepuzzling are its surface properties. One of the most important liq-uid/gas interfaces is the surface of the ocean, and knowing how tomodel chemical reactions and evaporation at the ocean surface isnecessary for understanding earth’s climate. College of Chemistryatmospheric chemist Ron Cohen and Saykally are working togetherto develop techniques for better understanding the evaporation ofocean water.

Saykally has been studying whether the surface of water isacidic or basic. Although bulk water is neutral with a pH of 7.0,water is constantly creating low levels of hydronium (H3O

+) andhydroxl (OH-) ions as protons migrate between water molecules.

“Although these ions exist in equal proportions in bulk water,we suspect more hydronium ions migrate to the surface, making itacidic,” says Saykally. The extra proton in the hydronium ionchanges the nature of its hydrogen bonds, mutating it into a mole-cule with three feet and only one very weak hand. The extra feet of

Saykally’s greatest hits

Terahertz laser spectroscopy of waterclusters. Building the understanding ofliquid water one molecule at a time.Starting from the dimer (two-moleculecluster), then the trimer, through thehexamer (six-molecule cluster).

Velocity modulation laser spectroscopyof ions. Characterizing fundamental ionssuch as hydronium (H3O+), ammonium(NH4

+) and hydroxyl (OH-) in detail.

Cavity ringdown laser spectroscopy.Precise measurement of red shift ofhydrogen bond vibration in water.

Femtosecond 2nd harmonic generationlaser spectroscopy. Characterizing thepH of the liquid water surface.

X-ray spectroscopy of liquid microjets.Characterizing solvation in aqueoussolutions.

Source: R. Saykally and J. Lee

“Spectroscopy,” says Rich Saykally, “is the interaction oflight with matter.” For him, light is any form of electro-magnetic radiation, not just visible light. Here is a shortlist of Saykally’s favorite spectroscopic innovations.

In chemistry professor Rich Saykally’s“hand and feet” model of hydrogen bondsin water, the torso represents an atom ofoxygen and the feet atoms of hydrogen. Thelegs represent covalent bonds and the armshydrogen bonds. Each water molecule isbonded with four other water molecules.

f e a t u r e


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you down. Fill your lungs with air, and the average density of yourbody becomes less than that of water, and you float.

“When you walk along a beach, you share more than you mightthink with that nearby body of water,” says Saykally. Our distantancestors evolved in the ocean, and when they moved to land, theyencapsulated their ocean environment and took it with them, hungon a framework of calcium carbonate bones and surrounded by atough, flexible fibrous covering called skin. Normal saline—thelevel of saltiness in our tissues—is lower than that of today’s oceansonly because the oceans have becoming saltier over millions ofyears. We are ambulatory blobs of primordial ocean water.

Our bodies are in constant interplay with the rest of the plan-et’s water. We consume water when we eat and drink, and get rid ofwater through respiration, perspiration and urination. The criticalneed is to make sure that the water we consume is suitable for theenvironment inside our bodies, and the water we dispose of is madesuitable for the earth’s environment. For Rich Saykally, and for therest of the growing mass of humanity, this will be one of the greatchallenges we face in the next few decades.

the H3O+ ions push it to the surface. “Since many reactions with

water occur at the interface, it’s important to verify this effect—butit’s tough to do experimentally,” Saykally cautions.

For developing new water purification technologies, under-standing the solid/liquid interface is critical. Many purification anddesalinization techniques depend on interactions with ceramicmaterials. “We have to develop a better understanding of what isgoing on at the liquid/solid interface if we want better and cheaperwater purification,” Saykally concludes.

When not working in his lab in the basement of HildebrandHall or conducting experiments at the Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory (where he is a Faculty Senior Scientist), Saykally can befound talking about water with television, radio and print journal-ists. Saykally was recently a guest of science journalist and environ-mentalist David Suzuki on the Canadian television series, “TheSacred Balance.”

As a child swimming in Lake Tomahawk, Saykally intuitivelyunderstood that our bodies are about 70 percent water. Let air outof your lungs, and the relatively high density of your bones pulls

(left) Rich Saykally discusses an optical bench experiment with graduate student Janel Uejio. (right) The crystal stucture of water ice 1h, the naturallyoccurring form on Earth. Ice has many other crystal structures at lower temperatures and higher pressures.

A glass of water sits on a table. At first appearance, it is a system atrest, unremarkable and unchanging. But if we could zoom in on thewater and glass, and view them at the molecular level, these every-day substances would not appear so ordinary after all.

At the molecular level, the world is a dynamic one, constantlyin flux. This is the world of chemistry professor David Chandler, atheoretical chemist and proponent of statistical mechanics—theapplication of probability theory to explain the macroscopic or bulkproperties of materials by describing the microscopic forces at workon individual atoms and molecules.

At the beginning of his textbook, Introduction to ModernStatistical Mechanics, Chandler states:

Statistical mechanics is the theory with which we analyze thebehavior of natural or spontaneous fluctuations. It is theubiquitous presence of fluctuations that makes observationsinteresting and worthwhile. Indeed, without such randomprocesses, liquids would not boil, the sky would not scatterlight, indeed every dynamic process in life would cease.

Says Chandler, “At first, some chemistry students have a hardtime grasping statistical mechanics because it is such a differentway to look at matter. Even a very small bit of matter is a macroscopicsystem composed of many particles—so many that it’s impossibleto completely specify its behavior in a deterministic way. So igno-rance becomes a law of nature for these particle systems, and thisignorance leads us to statistical descriptions and to the acceptanceof random fluctuations.”

Chandler gave no early indications that he would become ascientist, much less a leading thinker in the intensely mathematicalfield of statistical mechanics. He was born in 1944 in New York Cityand spent most of his youth in Great Neck, a north shore LongIsland suburb. Looking back on his childhood, Chandler describeshimself as an indifferent student whose main interests were athleticsand music.

He began his college education in the fall of 1962 at StevensInstitute of Technology, a small college in Hoboken, NJ. SaysChandler, “Applying myself turned into a revelation. For the firsttime, intellectual activity was rewarding. I was good at physics,chemistry and math, and I began to consider becoming a scientist.My feeling was that science was both important and rewarding.That was the romance of it. I learned about the great figures of sci-ence and their struggles to advance knowledge, a romance that ben-efited mankind.”

Chandler’s aptitude caught the attention of his teachers atStevens, and they encouraged him to transfer to MIT in Cambridge,MA. In the fall of 1963, Chandler moved on to MIT, where he com-pleted his chemistry B.S. in 1966.

Clearthinkingaboutclear stuff

The dynamicideas of

David Chandler

He then began graduate studies in chemical physics atHarvard, in the research group of Roy Gordon. Three years laterChandler completed his Ph.D. thesis, “The mode expansion, a newmethod in statistical mechanics.” In his thesis, Chandler developedtechniques to understand the equilibrium properties of electrolytesolutions and simple liquids.

Chandler then took a postdoctoral position at UC San Diego inthe research group of chemist Kurt Shuler. There he met JohnWeeks, a fellow postdoc, and they initiated a collaboration with HansAndersen, a newly appointed Stanford professor whom Chandlerhad known at MIT and Harvard.

Andersen has written about these years, “It was at UCSDthat David met John Weeks, also a Shuler postdoc, and theWeeks-Chandler-Andersen (WCA) collaboration was formed. Wewere young, energetic, and ambitious, with differing skills and tem-peraments, but we worked together well. I look back on that collabo-ration fondly as some of the best research I have ever done, as wellas the most enjoyable.”

One result of this collaboration was the WCA theory, a quanti-tative description of liquid structure and thermodynamics in termsof molecular packing. “During the summer of 1970,” saysChandler, “we submitted what would become our primary paper tothe Journal of Chemical Physics, but it was initially rejected for pub-lication.” However, the editor of the journal, Willard Stout, felt thepaper was important work and was eventually able to publish it in1971. Since then, the paper and its ideas have been cited thousandsof times in the scientific literature.

Recalling those events, Chandler says, “Decades later, I stillremember the emotions felt during that period: the elation in dis-covering something true and important and the aggravation in nothaving this discovery initially accepted. The ties I made to JohnWeeks and Hans Andersen during this time are everlasting. Theyare my brothers in science and in spirit. We have faithfully supportedone another for more than three decades.”

Chandler began his first academic appointment in 1970 as anassistant professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign. “I was lured there by Illinois’s extraordinaryprogram in physical chemistry,” says Chandler, “and especially bythe prospect of working with the brilliant physical chemist BillFlygare.”

Chandler became a full professor in 1978. Tragically,Chandler’s friend and colleague Flygare died from amyotrophic lateralsclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1981. “Bill was my mentor and mymost meaningful friend in Illinois,” says Chandler, who later dedi-cated his textbook to the memory of Flygare.

In the summer of 1983, Chandler left Illinois to accept a long-standing offer from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1986, UCBerkeley’s College of Chemistry persuaded him to join the faculty here.

Chandler moved west with his wife and daughters. Chandler’swife, Elaine, is a theoretical physicist. Upon arriving in Berkeley,Elaine began working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,where she rose through its ranks to lead basic research on thephysics of materials for Science Based Stockpile Stewardship. In2005, she moved to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,where she is currently the deputy director of LBNL’s Helios SolarResearch Center.

Chandler had met Elaine while they were both MIT undergradu-ates. Says Chandler, “At MIT I used my piano-playing skills to intro-duce myself to young women, showing up at women’s dormitoriesthroughout the Boston area, playing the piano. One woman, later tobe my wife, Elaine, found these performances annoying, but even she,my toughest critic, would eventually succumb. We married in thespring of 1966, and we have remained together ever since. We raisedtwo daughters, Phoebe and Cynthia, and we are now grandparents.”

f e a t u r e


15Under the watchful eye of College of Chemistry glassblower James Breen,chemistry professor David Chandler works with molten glass. The safetyglasses used by Chandler and Breen are specially tinted to remove the brightyellow-orange sodium emission lines at 589 nm, allowing them to see deeperinto the flame.

After nearly 40 years as a chemistry professor, Chandler is stillexploring new frontiers. Chandler’s most recent research attemptsto understand something we all take for granted—a glass of water,sitting on a table.

If you could zoom in on the atomic-level structure of water, youcould easily tell whether it was in its liquid or solid state. As a liquid,the molecules of water are jumbled up, compared to the orderlycrystalline pattern of ice.

But if you were to zoom in on the atoms of molten and solidglass, you would have a hard time knowing which was which. “Likemolten glass,” says Chandler, “solid glass is a jumble of moleculeswithout an orderly crystalline pattern. So what makes it a solid? Wedon’t know the entire answer, but we have discovered an importantpart of it.”

Chandler and colleagues have been able to theoretically simu-late the process of melting and hardening glass. It is an unusualphase change, one that becomes apparent only when viewed in bothspace and time. “Now that we have a better sense of what to lookfor,” says Chandler, “we hope to work with the experimenters to findprotocols for collecting empirical data to verify the phase transitionphenomena described in our work.”

Ultimately, understanding the glass transition is importantbecause the principles governing it can guide scientists and engineerstowards methods for producing longer lasting and stronger varietiesof glass—materials that touch our lives everyday, from windows tokitchen equipment, from optical lenses to plastics to ceramics.

And what about the water inside the glass? Chandler remem-bers clearly the moment he realized he didn’t fully understandwater. It was in the mid-1990s, almost a decade after he arrived atBerkeley.

Chandler had just finished giving a lecture to a large under-graduate chemistry class, where he discussed the autoionization ofwater—when a proton migrates from one water molecule to another,creating a hydronium (H3O

+) and hydroxyl (OH-) ion. “As I left thelecture hall, on the way back to my office,” says Chandler, “I realizedI didn’t really know how or why water autoionized.”

Chandler and his research group—which then includedPhillip Geissler, now an assistant professor of chemistry—devel-oped a technique they called transition path sampling to work outthe details of autoionization.

“The half-life of a water molecule is 10 hours,” explainsChandler. “In a 10-hour period, there is a 50/50 chance that a watermolecule will autoionize.” Yet the autoionization event, when ittakes place, occurs in about a picosecond (10-12 seconds).


16

Because glass lacks a crystalline solid structure, thenature of the phase transition between its solid andliquid states has been a puzzle.

Chemistry professor David Chandler has helped solvethe puzzle by using a molecular dynamics simulationto follow the movement of individual molecules duringthe glass transition.

To understand the diagram above, imagine a thin slabof glass moving toward you as it begins to melt. Thediagram shows the change of position of the moleculesin space over time, as though several images taken atdifferent times were superimposed.

The amorphous solid glass is mostly yellow particles,while the melted glass is mostly blue particles. Theparticles are colored according to their overlap withtheir initial position—yellow for complete overlap,blue for no overlap.

At early times the particles in the system are jammedin the amorphous solid, while in later times the parti-cles diffuse in the melt. The interface between theamorphous solid and melt phase is a thin film in timeof width equal to the melt's relaxation time, tau.

(note: relaxation time refers to the time needed for a system torelax or achieve a new equilibrium under external stimuli.)

Autoionization is thus an extremely rare event, so rare that trying tomodel it using brute strength computation techniques is impractical.

“Given the potential number of molecular interactions and thetimescales involved,” says Chandler, “even in the era of supercom-puters, you still have to sit down with pencil and paper and thinkcarefully about how to approach a problem.” The transition pathsampling approach of Chandler, Geissler and colleagues was thebasis of another seminal paper that appeared in Science magazinein 2001.

That paper caught the attention of another pair of Berkeleychemistry professors, Richard Saykally and his former student,atmospheric chemist Ron Cohen. For Cohen and Saykally, the problemis understanding how evaporation and condensation lead to cloudformation. Clouds play a critical role in climate models, yet theunderlying chemistry is not well understood. Evaporation, likeautoionization, is another rare event that can be understood withtransition path sampling.

Says Chandler, “Think of a rogue wave on the open ocean.Wind and other forces that generate waves tend to be random in

nature and cancel each other out. But not always—in rare cases, theforces can reinforce each other and create huge waves that seem tocome out of nowhere.” Many credible reports exist of rogue waves90 to 100 feet in size.

“Evaporation,” Chandler continues, “is like a rogue wave at amolecular scale. Although a rare event, the energy on the surface ofwater can concentrate at a point and allow a water molecule to pop offthe surface and enter the gas phase.” Chandler, Geissler, Saykally andCohen are working together to better understand this phenomenon.

Research groups throughout the world have adopted transitionpath sampling in different contexts, and special workshops havebeen held to discuss and disseminate the technique.

Chandler remembers one meeting in particular, held in Parisin September 2003. “I sat in the audience,” he says, “and thoughtabout how pleased I was to witness a community of scientists dis-cussing an approach that my students and I had created. Thesepleasures—the pride in my students and the joy of discovery—arefeelings that continue to enrich my life, a life I have been so veryfortunate to have.”

f e a t u r e


17

Professors David Chandler and Phillip Geissler take a coffee break with Silver, the Chandler group’s mascot. Geissler is aformer Ph.D. student of Chandler’s. During spring semester, the two co-taught Chem 120B, Physical Chemistry. Says Chandlerof his former student, “Phill has been getting great teaching reviews for this course, so he was a hard act to follow.”

In a recent paper, Chandler andcolleagues examined the behaviorof 67 glass-forming liquids. Thegraphs of the left show differentcharacteristics for the liquids. Inthe graphs on the right, theresearchers showed that if certainfunctions of temperature andrelaxation times are used for theaxes, the data points all collapseand lie on the same parabola.

She has a distinct childhood memory ofdozing on a riverbank, soothed by the soundof raindrops falling on her umbrella. She wasfour years old. It was 1945, night-time on aGerman river, probably the Elbe. The men inher group were looking for a boat.

She and her family had crossed Poland aheadof the advancing Russian army, part of a smallgroup of refugees from Latvia. They stoppedoccasionally to work for local farmers, thenmoved on when the explosions from the frontgot too close. They had been caught once, andthe bribes to the Russian soldiers cost themher mother’s jewelry.

Their goal was the relative comfort of theAmerican sector in southern Germany. Buther family made it only as far as Oldenburg,a refugee center in northern Germany, in theBritish sector. There she lived in a DP (dis-placed persons) camp for five years, until 1950.

In the camp was a man who had a radio, andhe announced the news to the other refugees.One day the radio told of a new war in a placeshe had never heard of, a country called Korea.

In 1950 her family immigrated to New York,then moved to a farm in Indiana. Sheenrolled at Michigan State University andworked at the campus’s Kellogg Hotel andConference Center, part of the school’s hotelmanagement program.

That is how, on March 31, 1959, Zaiga Kuzecame to be the dinner hostess at the StateRoom restaurant on the campus of MichiganState University.

Joon-Sang (“Joon”) Moon was born in theindustrial city of Pohang, Korea, in 1937.He spent the years of WWII in a smallfishing village in southern Korea, watchingthe boats on the river. He started elemen-tary school when his family moved to thecapital city of Seoul in 1945.

Seoul had the misfortune of being close tothe 38th parallel, the arbitrary dividing linebetween North Korea and South Koreaestablished at the end of WWII. When theKorean War began in 1950, Seoul wasquickly overrun by the North Korean armyand Moon’s father, a businessman, wastaken away. The family never heard fromhim again.

Joon’s family moved farther south, to thecity of Taegu. After the Korean War, hereturned to Seoul to attend the prestigiousSeoul National University. Restless bynature, he hired an American soldier toteach him English. Joon was consideringstudying in the United States, and thesoldier, who had attended Michigan State,helped him apply there.

Joon was accepted as an internationaltransfer student and arrived on campus onMarch 31, 1959. That night he ate dinner atthe Kellogg Center’s State Room restaurant.Joon noticed the young hostess, although itwould be a few months before they wereformally introduced and he would learnher name, Zaiga Kuze.

Joon graduated from MSU with a B.S. inchemical engineering in 1960 and wasaccepted to UC Berkeley’s chemical engi-neering department. At Berkeley he studied

a l u m n u s p r o f i l e


18

mass transfer with Ted Vermeulen and JudKing, earning his Ph.D. in 1964.

Zaiga completed her undergraduate degreeat MSU and started graduate school atStanford in 1962. In the Bay Area, Zaiga andJoon got back in touch, a romance began,and they married in 1963. “Although wewere from different cultures and had dif-ferent temperaments,” says Zaiga, “our lifeexperiences brought us together.”

Their life experiences have been intertwinednow for over 46 years, including raisingfour children, developing several successfulbusinesses, donating to the universitiesthat helped them get their start in life, andreacquainting themselves with the peopleand the countries they left behind manyyears ago.

Joon began working for DuPont’s organicchemical division in New Jersey in 1963, afew months before he was officially awardedhis Ph.D. In 1965, he began consulting forCelanese Corp. and then returned to Koreafor a year with Zaiga. Their first child, ason, was born there.

“There had been big changes since I hadleft in 1959,” says Joon. “The economictake-off was just starting. Back thenSamsung was still a sugar producer, butsoon it branched out into electronics andother areas.” Today Samsung is one of thelargest of the chaebol, or Korean corporateconglomerates, along with Hyundai and LG.

Joon rejoined Celanese in 1967 and spentthe next two years in Mexico with Zaiga,their son, and a baby daughter, who hadbeen born in between their journeys overseas.

Joon and Zaiga Moon came fromdifferent worlds, but through love,

hard work, family and generosity,they created

A H O U S E O N A B I G R I V E R

As the technical director for the region, hehelped Celanese’s Mexican chemical andtextile factories become the most profitableof their North American operations.

By 1969 Joon was growing restless. He wasin his 30s, and he couldn’t see spendingthe next 20 years of his life working forsomeone else with the hope of eventuallybecoming a CEO. The family had left MexicoCity, and the household furnishings hadbeen shipped to his next assignment atCelanese headquarters in New York City. Itwas then he decided to start his own business.

Joon intercepted his belongings and hadthem shipped back to Michigan. The familysettled in Williamston, a suburban town

15 minutes from East Lansing. Two moredaughters joined the family, and he andZaiga remained in Williamston for 28years, until their youngest child hadgraduated from the local public schoolsystem in 1995.

“Although mixed-race kids are common inthe Bay Area now,” says Zaiga, “in Michiganin the 1970s and ’80s, no one knew quitewhat to make of our beautiful half-Asian,half-Caucasian children. But the localschool district was small, and we had fourkids in succession, so the teachers and stu-dents got used to seeing the Moon kids.”

During those years, Joon’s companies grewas well. His first business involved making

solid tires. One of his first innovations was toswitch from rubber to a new material, poly-urethane. Wheels made from polyurethanerolled smoothly and lasted longer thantraditional wheels. Joon was not the onlyone to notice. At about the same time, onschool playgrounds and in empty swimmingpools in Southern California, skateboardersdiscovered polyurethane wheels and usedthem to create new boards, new tricks andthe modern sport of skateboarding.

From this early success Joon’s businessesexpanded. True to his training, most wererelated to chemicals, and much of theoutput could be found in products availableat a well-stocked hardware store—draincleaners, bleach, detergents, swimmingpool chemicals, tile grouts and surfacebonding materials, and a variety of foamproducts.

Like Warren Buffet, the famous investor,Moon invested in things he understood.“Mainstream products are a good business,and somebody has to do it and do it well,”he says. “I wasn’t interested in high tech—high tech can be wiped out by higher tech.The trick is to develop technical advantageand apply it to everyday products. Peoplehave been baking for hundreds of years, butyou can make better bread at the same cost,or make the same bread cheaper. Everyproduct can benefit from better tech.”

By 1995, Joon was 58 years old. His busi-nesses had grown to 14 companies in 50locations. All four children had graduatedfrom high school and gone on to prestigiouscolleges and universities. It was time for achange. Joon began selling his companiesand became less of a hands-on executiveand more of an investor.

In 1991, Zaiga and Joon had established theJoon S. Moon Distinguished InternationalAlumni Award, which each year honors aninternational MSU graduate who has madeoutstanding contributions in his or her field.In 2006, Joon was awarded the MichiganState University Alumni AssociationDistinguished Alumni Award.

Joon and Zaiga Moon relax under an arbor at their home in Sonoma County.


19

a l u m n u s p r o f i l e

Over the years, Zaiga returned several timesto visit Latvia with her mother, Mirdza, whohad been a school teacher in Riga, the capi-tal city. At MSU, Zaiga and Joon createdthe the Mirdza Kuze Library EndowmentFund. The endowment enabled MSUlibraries to begin a Baltic collection.

Zaiga and Joon also were generous to UCBerkeley. They contributed a major gift toTan Hall, where a lab was named in theirhonor. In 2006, the couple helped estab-lish the Theodore Vermeulen Chair inChemical Engineering in honor of Joon’sdissertation advisor. Most recently, Joonhas pledged a challenge grant for a tributeto his other advisor, C. Judson King.

In retirement, Zaiga and Joon began amuch more footloose life together. Joonhad the time to indulge an interest thatstarted from his early childhood in aKorean fishing village—boats. But notsailboats. “I don’t have the patience forsailboats with all their rigging,” he says.“I just want to get in my boat, turn on theengine and go.”

When in the Bay Area, Joon and Zaiga stayon their property in Sonoma County, locatedin the rolling hills outside of Santa Rosa.Still a chemical engineer at heart, Joonhas been learning to make wine from thegrapes he grows on the hillside. “As chemi-cal processes go,” he says, “winemaking isslow and the aging process is complicated.After all that work, I think the result stilldepends on the quality of the feedstock—the grapes.”

After exploring Europe by boat and travelingin the United States, Joon and Zaiga founda new home, on the sunny northern bankof the Columbia River between Portland,OR, and Vancouver, WA. “When I was ayoung child in Korea, I was raised in ahouse on a small river,” Joon says. “NowI live in a house on a big river.”

Although Joon and Zaiga are fond ofPortland’s charming, accessible downtown,in their travels they have found somethingunique, a place Zaiga and her family hur-ried past on their trek across Poland andGermany almost 65 years ago—Berlin.

The landlocked capital of reunited Germanyseems like an odd choice for a boatingenthusiast. But says Joon, “Berlin is fasci-nating, a historic city that is booming again,with a young, international population.Zaiga and I both can speak a little German,and when we are there, we stay in a condoon Potsdamer Platz, the famous squarethat was once divided by the Berlin wall.”

For Zaiga, there are mixed feelings. “It hasbeen very meaningful for my mother toreturn to Europe and Latvia,” she says,“and I’m glad we did it. But the Latvian Ilearned to speak as a girl is not the sameas the language they speak there now. Forme there is not so strong a connection.”

For Zaiga and Joon, the center of gravityof their lives has switched from their oldworlds to the new, to four children, fivegrandchildren, and a house on a big river.Says Zaiga, “I think we’re Americans now.”


20

Above : Joon and Zaiga in Puerto Rico on their first trip to the Caribbean in 1964.Below le f t : Zaiga and Joon vacationing on Long Island, July 1965.Below r ight : Joon, Zaiga and the first three children at home in Williamston, MI, in 1974.

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c o l l e g e o f c h e m i s t r y u p d a t e s

Recent awards to Collegeof Chemistry faculty:The Community in the Classroom program,fostered by chemistry professor ROBERT

BERGMAN, won the 2009 Chancellor’sPublic Service Award for Campus-Community Programs.

CAROLYN BERTOZZI (Ph.D. ’93, Chem),the T. Z. and Irmgard Chu DistinguishedProfessor of Chemistry and professor ofmolecular and cell biology, received the2009 Harrison Howe Award from theAmerican Chemical Society.

MATTHEW FRANCIS, associate professorof chemistry, was one of five recipients ofthe UC Berkeley 2009 DistinguishedTeaching Award, the highest honor forteaching excellence presented by theBerkeley campus.

JEAN M. J. FRÉCHET, Henry RapoportProfessor of Chemistry and professor ofchemical engineering, received the 32ndCarothers Award, presented by the DelawareSection of the American Chemical Society.Fréchet shared the award with Hiroshi Itoof the IBM Almaden Research Center.

JAY KEASLING, the Hubbard Howe Jr.Distinguished Professor of BiochemicalEngineering and professor of bioengineering,won the 2009 Chancellor’s Research in thePublic Interest Award.

RACHEL A. SEGALMAN, the Charles WilkeAssistant Professor of Chemical Engineering,and RICHMOND SARPONG, assistantprofessor of chemistry, received prestigiousAlfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships. Sarpongalso won a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-ScholarAward.

GABOR SOMORJAI, University Professorand professor of chemistry, was selected asthe Foreign Honorary Member by theChemical Society of Japan, an academicsociety with a long history in chemical edu-cation and public outreach.

TING XU, assistant professor in chemistryand materials science and engineering, wona Young Investigator award from the U.S.Navy’s Office of Naval Research. She wasone of 15 award recipients selected for thehighly competitive program.

Advisory Board chair hosts San Diego science festivalLarry Bock, chairman of the College of Chemistry’s AdvisoryBoard, and his wife, Diane, recently co-hosted the San DiegoScience Festival, the West Coast’s largest science event. The fes-tival was a month-long celebration of science and the impact ofscience and innovation on our lives, culminating in a day-longexpo at San Diego’s Balboa Park, attended by more than 50,000

people. The Bocks are donors of the Larry and Diane Bock EndowedChair in Nanotechnology, held by chemistry professor Paul Alivisatos.

Graham Fleming named vice chancellor for researchGraham R. Fleming, the Melvin Calvin Distinguished Professor ofChemistry, founding director of the UC Berkeley arm of the CaliforniaInstitute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), and former deputy director ofLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has been appointed the campus’svice chancellor for research.

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research administers federal, state and privateresearch funds received by the campus and oversees campus museums and researchunits. Berkeley received nearly $607 million in research funding in fiscal year 2008, anincrease of 20 percent from the previous year.

Fleming, 59, has relinquished his QB3 position but continues to run his research laboratoryin Hildebrand Hall.

Thanks to our College of Chemistry CommunityMore than a quarter of a century has passed since Dean Jud King gave me the opportunityto launch an alumni relations, development and public affairs program for the College ofChemistry. During that time, I have been truly privileged to work with an internationallyrenowned faculty, extremely talented students, generous and enthusiastic alumni, parentsand friends, and a dedicated and professional staff.

Although I am probably not known as the “retiring type,” I have, after much deliberation,decided to officially retire at the end of June. Now, as I prepare to transition from my role asassistant dean and accept the Dean’s invitation to join the ranks of some of you as a volun-teer, I wish to express my profound gratitude for your support and encouragement over theyears. Your interest in, and your contributions to, the College of Chemistry have assured thatBerkeley remains among the premier institutions in the world in which to study and engagein research in chemistry, chemical biology, and chemical engineering.

On a more personal note, I have been inspired by your generosity and commitment, andimmeasurably enriched by your friendship. Both the college and I are deeply indebted to you.

I am pleased to report that the expert colleagues who have worked with you and me in thepast will continue to facilitate your engagement with the college. (See chemistry.berkeley.edu/staff/college_relations.html.) Mindy Rex, our outstanding Director of Development, willassume the role of Acting Assistant Dean for College Relations and Development effectiveJune 30; I know you will enjoy working with her.

I look forward to continuing to work with you in my new capacity as volunteer (the Deanalready has a full agenda for me) and to seeing you at various college and university events.I would greatly enjoy hearing from you; my email is [email protected].

Again, my warmest thanks, and Go Bears!

—JANE SCHEIBERAssistant Dean, College Relations and Development


24

u n i v e r s i t y u p d a t e s

Seven Berkeley faculty members elected to NAS

Seven researchers at UC Berkeley are among 72 new members elected to the NationalAcademy of Sciences (NAS), one of the nation’s most prestigious societies of scholarsengaged in science and engineering research. This year’s election brings the total numberof NAS members at UC Berkeley to 136.

The new UC Berkeley members are Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy; Robert Fischer,professor of plant and microbial biology; Sarah Hake, director of the USDA Plant GeneExpression Center and adjunct professor of plant and microbial biology; Hiroshi Nikaido,professor of molecular and cell biology; Christos Papadimitriou, professor of electricalengineering and computer sciences; Mu-ming Poo, professor of molecular and cell biology;and Kevan Shokat, professor of chemistry with a joint appointment at UC San Francisco.

UC Regents raise 2009-10student fees

In May, facing a severe budget shortfall asa result of the state’s fiscal crisis, the UCBoard of Regents approved student feeincreases for the 2009-10 school year.

The increase—9.3 percent, or $662 forresident undergraduates—is consistentwith the fee hike that the state expectedUC to enact as part of the state budgetadopted in February, which left UC witha cumulative state funding shortfall of$450 million.

Student fee increases constitute one elementin a series of actions the university and thecampuses have taken to confront continu-ing cuts in state funding, while working toprotect the academic program and studentservices to the greatest extent possible.

At the same time, the university hasenhanced its financial aid program to helpmitigate the effect of higher fees for mostUC undergraduates and their families. TheBlue and Gold Opportunity Plan will coversystemwide fees for California residentswhose families earn less than $60,000 ayear and who qualify for financial aid.

Campus dedicates new CITRISresearch headquartersThe newest research center on Berkeley’s campus, Sutardja Dai Hall,was dedicated in March. CITRIS (Center for Information TechnologyResearch in the Interest of Society) is a program that draws on thefields of engineering, energy, health, law, public policy, politicalscience and new media to foster ground-breaking discoveries.

CITRIS is one of four public-private institutes launched in 2001 byformer Gov. Gray Davis as an investment in the state’s economicfuture. It combines the skills and talents of more than 300 facultyresearchers from four UC campuses—Berkeley, Davis, Merced andSanta Cruz—with industrial partners from more than 60 corporations.The seven-floor building, which includes the Marvell NanofabricationLaboratory, was built with public and private funding.

UC Berkeley’s seismic network has beenlinked to the state’s only seafloor seismicstation via a 32-mile underwater fiber-opticcable, permitting real-time data gathered fromwest of the San Andreas fault to be mergedwith data from 31 land stations scatteredaround Northern and Central California.

Barbara Romanowicz, professor of earthand planetary science and director of theBerkeley Seismological Laboratory, teamedup with the Monterey Bay AquariumResearch Institute more than 12 years agoto develop the seafloor MARS (MontereyAccelerated Research System) observatory.

The observatory, situated nearly 3,000 feetbelow the surface of Monterey Bay, 23 miles

Scientists cable seafloor seismometer intostate earthquake network

from the coast, was fully linked up with theBerkeley Digital Seismic Network in February.

The MARS (Monterey Accelerated Research System)cable connects a seafloor science node (orange) to theshore at Moss Landing, just north of Monterey. Multiplescientific instruments can be plugged into the node.

AARON

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URG

For more information, visit newscenter.berkeley.edu


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Donald J. Simkin (M.S. ChemE;B.S. ’45 Chem) is still enjoyingretirement in Orange County,

CA, with his wife, Natalie, and theirextended family, many of whom are UCalumni.

Carl W. Garland (Ph.D. Chem)is an emeritus professor ofchemistry at MIT in Cambridge,

MA, where he continues to teach andconduct research.

Leaving Ashland, OR, where heis an emeritus professor ofchemistry at Southern Oregon

University, Rodney A. Badger (Ph.D.; M.S.’66, Chem) emigrated to Canada with his

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Class Notes

wife, Martine Reid. They live part of theyear in France, and he enjoys travel, pho-tography, canoeing, restoring wooden boats,and the indigenous art and culture of thePacific Northwest.

After his postdoc with BillDauben, Herman Krabbenhoft(Pdoc Chem) worked as a

research chemist at General Electric’s cor-porate research and development center inSchenectady, NY, for more than 25 years.His research was primarily in the areas ofmonomer and polymer synthesis for appli-cations in engineering thermoplastics.Since retiring from GE in 2001, he hasbeen pursuing another passion—baseballresearch. In 2006, his first book, Leadoff

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Dear Alums,Congratulations and awarm welcome to ournewest alumni, themembers of the Class of2009, who have startedwhat we hope willbecome an ongoing

tradition—the College of Chemistry SeniorClass Campaign. This year’s campaign forthe Class of 2009 was launched on Sept. 3,2009, with a celebration for all the gradu-ating seniors. The event was sponsored bythe College, its Chemistry & ChemicalEngineering Alumni Association andProcter & Gamble.

A core group of seven students assisted inplanning the campaign and identifying thekey fundraising targets: purchase of labora-tory equipment and instructional software.The campaign leaders included seniorsConnie Lim, Michael Tsiang and Kirk Lao.Also helping were several Class of 2010students (who will be leaders for nextyear’s campaign): Matt Richards, MarijkeVan Syke, Anita Kalathil and Shirley Song.

Early in the campaign, the members of ourChemistry and Chemical EngineeringAlumni Association Steering Team pledgedto match the students’ gifts dollar-for-dollar.

Students supported the fund by givingonline and responding to brochures andtelephone calls.

Many gifts and pledges came in duringthe two-day period when undergraduatespicked up their commencement ticketsand received a gift from the alumniassociation.

A total of $2,135 in gifts and pledges wasraised by the students. This represents a23 percent participation rate by the Classof 2009 and sets a high bar for the rest ofthe more seasoned alumni to reach.

—REBECCA ZUCKERMANPh.D.’00, Chem

Chair, Chemistry & Chemical EngineeringAlumni Association Steering Team

College alumni named to president’s advisory councilPresident Barack Obama announced the President’s Council of Advisors on Science andTechnology (PCAST) in April, and two of the twenty members, Mario Molina (Ph.D. ’72,Chem) and Ahmed Zewail (Postdoc ’75, Chem), are college alumni and Nobel laureates.

PCAST is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who advisethe president to help formulate policy in the many areas where understanding of science,technology and innovation is key to strengthening the U.S. economy.

Molina shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995 for his role in elucidating the threat tothe Earth’s ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases. Zewail was awarded the Nobel Prizein chemistry in 1999 for his pioneering work that allowed the observation of exceedinglyrapid molecular transformations.

College of Chemistry mugs entice graduating seniors to register for the commencement ceremony.

For the fall 2008 semesterHolger Butenschoen (PdocChem) was a Visiting Professor

here in the Department of Chemistry.His home base is on the faculty of theUniversität Hannover, Germany.

Having earned an M.B.A. fromHarvard Business School,Rodney S. Harl (B.S. ChemE)

had a ten-year-plus hiatus from anythingscience- or engineering-related, but in2008, he and a partner purchased AleneCandles, a manufacturer in Milford, NH.As its president, he is thrilled to be back inmanufacturing, enjoying the (re)exposureto process engineering and product chem-istry in general. He and his wife, Amy, livein Denver, CO.

Alice N. S. Ko (B.S. ChemE) currentlyworks as a piano teacher, professionalchoral singer, model, and actress. She willbe traveling to Paris in the summer with theNotre Dame des Victoires choir of SanFrancisco and is excited to have landed herfirst movie role as an annoyed waitress in afeature length indie film by AsianAmerican writer/director, Raul Jocson. Youcan see more about her at castimages.com.

Bruce G. Szczepankiewicz(Ph.D. Chem) left his job atAbbott in 2007 to take a position

at Sirtris (purchased by GlaxoSmithKleinin 2008) in Cambridge, MA. He reportsthat the past two years, including the movefrom Illinois to Massachusetts, have beenvery eventful for him and his family.

Jennifer Cruz Rea (B.S. ChemE)and her husband, Steven,recently welcomed their second

son, Daniel. She is finishing up her Ph.D.in chemical engineering at NorthwesternUniversity, with an anticipated degree date

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Batters of Major League Baseball CompleteStatistics, 1900-2005, was published byMcFarland. He is now working on twomore books. (See mcfarlandpub.com.) Heand his wife of 32 years, Patti, make theirhome in Scotia, NY; they have two daugh-ters, both of whom live in Boston.

Having worked at Oncologicwith his research director,Henry Rapoport, in 2000,

Geoffrey K. Cooper (Pdoc Chem) decided topursue a career as a patent attorney andreturned to the University of Oregon (wherehe’d earned a chemistry Ph.D. in the late1970s) to complete a law degree in 2003.After two years working in Portland, OR,he joined his present firm, SchwegmanLundberg Woessner, based in Minneapolis,practicing patent law primarily in the areaof organic and medicinal chemistry andmedical devices having a molecular com-ponent. He finds the work very interestingand enjoys using his chemistry educationin writing patents. He writes,“Minneapolis doesn’t quite have the tem-perate climate of Berkeley, however!”

After studying “the Dark Energy problem”for 10 years, Peter B. Wilson (B.S. ChemE),who lives in Phoenix, AZ, has posted histhesis on dark-energy.org. He writes, “Ihope it’s accepted before I die! Please visitthe site and vote on my thesis.”

Nancy E. Bell (M.S. ChemE)works as senior manager ofproduct and development

engineering at NXP Semiconductors inHopewell Junction, NY.

Pramodh S. Sidhu (B.S. ChemE) hasworked as a cardiologist in the San Ramon/Walnut Creek area for the past 20 yearsand lives in Danville with his wife, Kulveen.He writes, “Hoping to see the Bears makeit to the Rose Bowl some day.”

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c l a s s n o t e smarch 7, 2009

Cupola EraAlumni Event

Nancy O’Connor (B.A.’58, English) and JohnIngraham (B.S.’47, Chem) attend the annualCupola Era Alumni luncheon to hear about theexciting research taking place in the college.

Dean Richard Mathies enjoys talking withCupola Era alumni Hugh Barnett (B.S.’60, ChE)and Rita Wieland (B.S.’46, Chem).

(l. to r.) Jud Goodrich (Ph.D.’51, Chem), DonHildenbrand (Ph.D.’51, Chem), Bruce Stangeland(Ph.D.’67, ChemE), Jeff Davis (Ph.D.’59, Chem),and Emerti Professors Rollie Myers (Ph.D.’51,Chem) and Sam Markowitz catch up on theevents of the past year.

of June 2009, and the family plans toreturn to the Bay Area for the warmerweather. Steven Rea was a visiting scholarat the College of Chemistry from theUniversity of Leeds during the 2001–02academic year.

Xiaoyang Liu (B.S. Chem) wroteto let us know that she is in thechemistry Ph.D. program at the

University of Idaho in Moscow, ID, and toexpress her gratitude toward her professors,advisors, and teaching assistants here atthe College.

Last year, Soham Mookerjea (B.S. ChemE),who now lives in Singapore, enjoyed excit-ing trips to Tahoe, Las Vegas, and India.

Wendy Trinh (B.S. ChemE) writes that ittook six months to find her first job aftergraduation, and she then discovered thatthe company was having difficulty payingits employees on time. “Another year oftorture went by” before she snagged hercurrent position with a company shelearned about while promoting GEICO atthe Sonoma drag races. “Talk about pureluck! And my current job has almostNOTHING to do with my degree!” Sheworks as a project engineer at PetersonPower Systems/CATERPILLAR in SanLeandro, CA, using AutoCAD to createsubmittals and operation manuals. She andher partner, Don Barr, live in San Jose, CA.

Charles W. Crawford (Ph.D.Chem) took a position inFebruary as a senior NMR sci-

entist with NanoMR in Albuquerque, NM.

In January 2009, Jonathan B. Germain(Ph.D. ChemE) started work as a processengineer at Applied Materials inSunnyvale, CA.

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april 16, 2009

Dean’s Dinner

Tim Montgomery (B.S. ’73, ChemE) and his wife,Robbie, enjoy spending an evening with othercollege supporters at the annual Dean’s Dinner.

Sandy Brown (B.S.’86, Chem) catches up withher former professor Andy Streitwieser at theDean’s Dinner.

Ellen D. Beaulieu (Ph.D. Chem)has been doing postdoctoralresearch at SRI International in

Menlo Park since February. She and herhusband, David Beaulieu, live in Berkeley.

Starting in fall 2009, Joleine M. Bigcas(B.S. ChemBio) will be attending theUniversity of Maryland at Baltimore Schoolof Pharmacy. She writes that UMB is oneof the top ten pharmacy schools in theU.S. and provides a lot of great opportuni-ties for its pharmacy students.

Daniel Y. K. Cheng (B.S. ChemBio) plans tostay in the area to serve at the EastbayBible Church of Berkeley. He will also beapplying for, and pursuing, a graduatedegree in environmental engineering.

Bryan C. Condy (B.S. ChemE) wrote thathe and Dayna Bowen married in May2009.

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This summer, Anne Perring (Ph.D. Chem)starts a postdoc at the National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administration.

Kai Yin See (B.S. ChemBio) will be spendingthe summer building a clinic in a poorGuatemalan village, representing the U.S.in the Global HEED (Health Education andEconomic Development) Summer Internship.

Joseph H. Tingsanchali (M.S. ChemE) takesa position in July as a process engineer atSamsung Semiconductor in Austin, TX.

Following graduation, Helen Tran (B.S.Chem) will start work as a staff researcherin the Center for X-Ray Optics at LBNL.

Andrew C. K. Wang (B.S. ChemBio) willpursue graduate studies at the CaliforniaInstitute of Technology in Pasadena, CA.

Since last January, Robyn A. Wong (B.A.Chem) has been working as a chemistrylab manager at the Lawrence Hall ofScience in Berkeley.


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c l a s s n o t e s

Following a trip back to Vietnam for amonth following graduation, Duy TrongDao (B.S. ChemBio) will start medicalschool in August.

Irena Dragojevic (Ph.D., B.S. ’04, Chem)started a position as a research assistant inthe Nuclear Science Division of LBNL inApril.

Henry Fong (B.S. Chem) has been acceptedinto the chemistry graduate program at MIT.

The joy of graduating led Hai Yen Thi Ho(B.S. ChemBio) to wax poetic with thesesentiments: “Live, love, and laugh as achemical biology nerd.”

Stephen Le (B.S. ChemE) has landed a jobwith Envirokinetics in Montclair, CA.

Connie Lim (B.S. ChemE) begins in August2009 as an analyst in the OperationsRotational Development Program atGenentech in South San Francisco.

Starting this fall, Ann Long (B.S. ChemBio)will be attending Touro College ofOsteopathic Medicine in New York.

Jennifer McBee (Ph.D. Chem) has a joblined up as a process engineer at IntelCorporation in Hillsboro, OR.

Adam D. Miller (Ph.D. Chem) is doingpostdoctoral work in the EnvironmentalEnergy Technologies Division of LBNL.

Martin J. Mulvihill (Ph.D. Chem) is a post-doctoral researcher in the MaterialsScience Division of LBNL. He and his part-ner, Amber R. Wise (Ph.D.’08, Chem), whois doing a postdoc at UCSF’s Program onReproductive Health and the Environment,live in Berkeley. Amber received the firstBenjamin Boussert (Ph.D. ’05, Chem)Memorial Award in May 2008, and Martyreceived this year’s Boussert Award.

april 18, 2009

Cal Day

In the Latimer lobby, undergraduate advisors Joey Wong and Maura Daly answer questionsfor prospective students and their families.

Alumni Association Steering Team member LindyVejar of Bio-Rad uses the company’s test kits toprecipitate the DNA of visitors.

College lecturer Michelle Douskey performschemistry demonstrations in Pimentel Hall.


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In Memoriami n m e m o r i a m

Friends of thecollege

WILLIAM J. BENJAMIN

William J. Benjamin, a generous friendto the College and a regular attendee atCollege events, made his career with ShellOil. After retiring in 1979, he served as alecturer in the Department of ChemicalEngineering. His wife of 65 years, Inez,died last summer, and he passed away onFebruary 22, 2009. He is survived by hisson and two daughters and their families.

MARY DEE VERMEULEN

Mary Dee Vermeulen, a long-time memberof the College of Chemistry family and thewidow of professor Theodore Vermeulen,one of the founders of the Department ofChemical Engineering, passed away onApril 9, 2009, at the age of 92. Until herlast illness she had been active in universityaffairs, as a member of the BerkeleyEmeriti Association and the UniversitySection Club, and a regular at the FacultyClub, where she often entertained. Withother faculty wives she provided warm andwelcoming support to several generationsof students. After professor Vermeulen’sdeath in 1983, determined to make some-thing positive from her loss, she worked tocreate the Theodore Vermeulen MemorialAward for outstanding students. Morerecently, she helped endow the TheodoreVermeulen Chair in Chemical Engineering(currently held by Alex Bell), which sheestablished in 2006 with the help of herhusband’s former students and colleagues.She is survived by her two sons, Ray andBruce, and their families, in whom shedelighted.

AlumniRaymond M. Keefer (B.S.Chem), a member of the UCDavis chemistry department

faculty for 40 years, passed away onFebruary 6, 2009, at the age of 95. A dedi-cated and popular teacher, he continued toteach freshman chemistry classes evenduring his 12-year tenure as departmentchair—a period that saw the department’sfaculty and graduate student populationstriple! As a university administrator, hehelped create the College of Letters andScience and took leadership roles in theAcademic Senate and the Committee onAcademic Personnel. Keefer’s researchfocused primarily on chemical complexes,with results that contributed to such fieldsas the development of pharmaceuticalcompounds and the search for new fuels.He co-authored Molecular Complexes inOrganic Chemistry and Chemistry:Experiment and Theory. He is survived byhis wife of 66 years, Hilda, their two chil-dren, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Stanford M. Smith (B.S. Chem)was born and raised in Japanand made his way to Berkeley

for college by traveling alone throughoutAsia and Europe. Following graduation, heworked as a chemist at Ohio Chemical,becoming plant manager in Cleveland in1954. After his retirement in 1977, he livedin Santa Barbara, CA, where he passed awayat the age of 96 on November 20, 2008.He is survived by his wife of 63 years,Bernell, their five children, ten grandchil-dren, and eleven great-grandchildren.

We recently learned that Jack A.Keenan (B.S. Chem) died onJanuary 23, 2007. He had been

a co-founder and president of Connohio, a

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april 30, 2009

SpringfestCelebrating the College’s 2009

graduating students and postdocs

Executive Associate Dean Doug Clarkand Chair of the Alumni AssociationSteering Team Rebecca Zuckerman toastthe class of 2009.

College of Chemistry graduates enjoy thegood food and good company at Jupiterbeerhouse in Berkeley.

on March 14, 2009, near his home inLafayette, CA, survived by his wife of 65years, two children, and four grandchildren.

We recently learned that Marianna W.Jurasek (B.A. Chem) passed away onSeptember 16, 2007.

Patricia W. Durbin-Heavey(B.S. Chem; Ph.D. ’53Biophysics) started work at the

Crocker Laboratory, a predecessor of partsof LBNL, while still an undergraduate. Sheearned her Ph.D.in 1953 from Berkeley inbiophysics, focusing on medicine and thebiology of radionuclides. An extensiveinterview with her, recorded by the UCBerkeley Bancroft Library Regional OralHistory Office, provides a history of earlymedical physics and radionuclide researchat the Crocker Laboratory and LBNL. AnOakland resident, she passed away onMarch 5, 2009.

William C. Orr (Ph.D. Chem) interruptedhis graduate studies at Berkeley, where heworked on the separation of plutonium, toserve in the Navy during WWII. Followingthe war, he married Jean Beverly Clarinand returned to California, where he com-pleted his Ph.D. with Robert Connick(Ph.D. ’42, Chem). After a year’s post-doc-toral research in the lab of Glenn Seaborg(Ph.D. ’37, Chem), he accepted a positionas an assistant professor of chemistry atthe University of Connecticut, Storrs,where he where he spent his career, retir-ing in 1978. His research focused on theuse of radioactive isotopes as tracers.While a vistor at the Brookhaven NationalLab, he coauthored a paper characterizingiodine-125. He was involved in civildefense planning and operations for thestate of Connecticut, and he invented aradiation dosage calculator in the formof a circular slide rule that could predictradiation dosages over time, based on field

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measurements. It was used successfully bythe Atomic Energy Commission and theU.S. Army in the testing of atomic weaponsin Nevada. Among the students he mentoredwas Charles J. Gallagher, Jr (Ph.D. ’58Chem), who became a Columbia Universityphysics professor. Orr played a key role inthe creation of UConn’s Institute ofMaterials Science and Engineering andserved as the university’s associate provost.He died on January 16, 2009, predeceasedby his first wife, Jean, but survived by hissecond wife, Nancy Lyford, three children,two step-children, and two grandchildren.

Henry “Loyd” Bottorff (B.S.ChemE) served for two years inthe U.S. Army Chemical Corps

after graduation. He married Lucille AnnaTruax, took his first job with Union CarbideLinde Division in Buffalo, NY, and thentransferred to Union Carbide SiliconesDivision in Sistersville, WV. Subsequentpositions included plant manager of theGE Plastics, Borg-Warner Chemicals facilityin Morgantown, WV, and constructionmanager of three new GE Plastics chemicalplants in the Louisiana area. In 1990, theBottorffs retired to Port Orange, FL, wherehe passed away on March 18, 2009, prede-ceased by his wife and survived by twochildren and two grandchildren.

Jerome V. Hopson (B.S. Chem) worked asa chemist for the United States CustomsService in San Francisco, Baltimore, andfinally, in Washington, DC. Followingretirement in 1978, he and his wife, Mary,and family moved to Stratton, ME, wherethey owned and operated the Widow’sWalk Bed and Breakfast until 2006. Anavid reader, he served as librarian at theStratton Public Library for many years. Hedied on November 22, 2008, survived byhis wife of 50 years, four children, andthree grandchildren.

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company that sold oil and ice, and chair-man of the board of the investment firmS.C. Parker and Co. He lived in Buffalo,NY, and more recently in Tucson, AZ.His wife, Eleanor, survives him.

Matthew K. Fountain (B.S.Chem) passed away on March19, 2009, in Citrus Heights,

CA. His wife, Lena “Lee” Fountain, prede-ceased him in 2005.

Following graduation, Leland L. Peart (B.S.Chem) served in the U.S. Army, stationedin Rio de Janeiro, and then took a job as achemical engineer for American Standardand Rheem Manufacturing. He marriedJeanette Theresa Bacon and had two sons.In 1980, after retiring from RockwellInternational, he and his second wife,Marie Bernice Peart, moved to Sedona, AZ,where he died on Dec. 21, 2008, at age 90,survived by his wife, a son, a grandson,and stepchildren.

Phillip S. Bettoli (B.S. Chem)worked as a chemist on theManhattan Project during

World War II. He made his career with theGAF Corporation in NJ, retiring after 20years of service as their director of researchand development. A supporter of thecollege, he passed away on February 3,2009, at the age of 89, survived by hiswife, Thelma “Pan” Bettoli, four children,and two grandchildren.

Gordon H. Goff (B.S. Chem),who was senior manager of theCal band, met his future wife,

Barbara Bush (B.A. ’43, Poli Sci), while stilla student at Cal. After service in the Army,he received an M.S. from Cal Tech. Heworked for Chevron and later for Bechtelas a chief process engineer and was amember and fellow of the AmericanInstitute of Chemical Engineers. He died

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Shou S. Kwong (B.S. ChemE)earned a Ph.D. in chemicalengineering from Purdue

University and worked for Brown & RoodBraun, retiring as a principal engineer. Heand his wife, Joanna, made their home inLaguna Woods, CA. He died on November19, 2008.

According to the New Energy Times, JamesA. “Doc” Patterson (B.S. Chem) was apioneer in cold fusion Low Energy NuclearReaction (LENR) research, using lightwater instead of heavy water in experimentshe conducted at his lab, Clean EnergyTechnology, in Sarasota, FL. He developeda cold fusion demonstration kit calledRIFEX (reaction in a film-excited complex),and the use of tiny plastic, metal-coatedmicrospheres as a substrate for use in lowenergy nuclear reaction experiments. Hisfellow inventor, Lawrence P. G. Forsley,described Doc’s lab in Sarasota as“wonderful—the size of an oversized garage,or an undersized airplane hangar—amarvelous combination of 1950s technologycoupled with the best of 19th centuryphysics and chemistry. A modern-dayFaraday would have been right at homeamong the variety of ovens, wires, cables,chemicals, stirrers and more.” One of hislast projects was a self-sustaining LENRcell, powered initially by solar photovoltaics.He passed away on February 11, 2008,survived by his four children.

Harold G. Monsimer (B.S.Chem) earned his Ph.D. fromWayne State University in 1957

and worked as a research chemist atPennwalt (later Atochem) until his retire-ment. He was a member of the AmericanChemical Society and active in his church.Besides Clara Prestianni, his wife of 55years, he is survived by two children andtwo grandchildren. He passed away onJanuary 24, 2009, near his home inNorristown, PA.

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Yas Nomiyama (B.S. ChemE) was reporteddeceased as of March 19, 2007.

George F. Laws (Pdoc Chem)was a professor of chemistry atthe University of Otago, New

Zealand. He passed away on July 1, 2008,survived by his wife, Jenny.

Walter E. Nervik (Ph.D. Chem) passed awayat his home in Danville, CA, on April 6,2009. His 35-year career was spent as anuclear chemist and administrator at theLawrence Livermore National Laboratory.He is survived by his wife of 57 years,Marge, two children, and four grandchildren.

After doing independentresearch at Harvard and UCRiverside, August H. Maki

(Ph.D. Chem) joined the UC Davis chem-istry faculty in 1974, where his researchfocused primarily on magnetic resonancespectroscopy studies of chemical andbiological species with unpaired electrons,so-called “paramagnetic” systems. Incollaboration with Varian scientists, hedeveloped the first use of a method calledelectron-nuclear double resonance to probethe chemical environment of unpairedelectrons in organic compounds in solu-tion. He developed optically detected mag-netic resonance (ODMR) to provide highlysensitive detection of paramagnetic speciesin proteins—a method he could then useas a biochemical probe in understanding,for example, how certain amino acids suchas tryptophan in DNA-binding proteins caninsert themselves physically between theplanes of DNA bases. He trained genera-tions of UC Davis students and postdocs inphysical chemistry, becoming emeritus in1994. In 2000, he was elected a fellow ofthe International EPR (ElectronParamagnetic Resonance) Society in recog-nition of his many contributions to thefield. He passed away on October 22,2008, survived by his wife, Judith.

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Ronald S. Gordon (B.S. ChemE)passed away on August 31,2008. As a professor in materi-

als science and engineering at VirginiaTech, he served as its head from 1989 to1999. An energetic MSE advocate, friend,and mentor to faculty, staff, and students,he and his wife, Joan, established theRonald S. Gordon UndergraduateScholarship in Materials Science andEngineering at Virginia Tech. In retire-ment, they made their home in PalmCoast, FL. His wife, five children, and fivegrandchildren survive him.

Angelo Cosmides (B.S. ChemE)lived in San Francisco andworked as a translator of

Russian military and technical material forthe U.S. government. He died February 25,2009, survived by three siblings.

Jack S. Newell (B.S. ChemE)earned a Ph.D. from theUniversity of Texas and made

his 25-year career as a chemical engineerwith Union Carbide and Dow. In retire-ment, he lived in Given, WV, and passedaway on January 10, 2009, survived by hispartner, Diane Montevideo.

Theodore P. Sieder (M.S., B.S.’66, ChemE) worked for NalcoChemical Company in Chicago,

IL, as a research scientist, and patentednumerous inventions. He and his wife,Gayle, who survives him, made their homein Bolingbrook, IL. We recently learnedthat he had passed away on May 10, 2007.

compiled by dorothy read

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C O L L E G E O F C H E M I S T R Y , U C B E R K E L E Y

M AY 2 3 , 2 0 0 9 • 2 : 0 0 P M • Z E L L E R B A C H H A L L

John Brauman was born in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1937. Afterearning an undergraduate degree at MIT (B.S. ’59), hereceived his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in chemistry in 1963.He was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowat UCLA, then took a position at Stanford University, wherehe is J. G. Jackson–C. J. Wood Professor of Chemistry,Emeritus. He was Department Chair, Associate Dean forNatural Sciences, and has been Associate Dean of Researchsince 2005. He also currently serves as the Home Secretaryof the National Academy of Sciences. He has received theNational Medal of Science and numerous other awardsand honors.

’09 commencement

Three generations of scholars: commencement speaker John Brauman (right), earned his Ph.D. at Berkeley with AndrewStreitwieser (left). Berkeley chemistry professor Kristie Boering (middle) earned her Ph.D. at Stanford with Brauman.

“It is easy to do ‘research’ that is not very risky. In general, it is alsonot very interesting. That is not the style of great science, and it is cer-tainly not the style to which you have been exposed.”

“The downside of high risk undertakings is that failure is more likely.But I can assure you that the results are well worth it, and I urge younot to be too conservative as you begin your careers.”

“In difficult times there are often opportunities. Upheaval makes clearthe need for new ideas, directions and people. And, invariably someof the most exciting things happen in, or after, times of dislocation.”

for full text of speech, please visit:

chemistry.berkeley.edu/commencement/address/2009_address.html

EXCERPTS FROM COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY JOHN BRAUMAN

Catalystuniversity of california berkeleyCollege of Chemistry420 latimer hall #1460berkeley, ca 94720-1460

Upcoming 2009 Fall Events

Homecoming WeekendOctober 2 Event for alumni who graduated in the last 10 years

9:00 p.m.–MidnightHaas Pavilion and Alumni HouseBerkeley CampusDirectly following the Homecoming Rally in HaasPavilion, come to the Alumni House for an enjoyableevening of socializing with fellow Bears! The event is$15 per person and includes appetizers, beer, wine anddancing to music provided by a DJ. To register and tosee a complete listing of campus events, go to home-coming.berkeley.edu.

October 3 Continental breakfast and lecture10:00–11:00 a.m.Pitzer Auditorium, 120 Latimer HallAssistant chemistry professor Richmond Sarpong willpresent a talk “Curing Diseases with Molecules fromNature.”Prior to the lecture, plan to attend a complimentarycontinental breakfast in the Latimer Lobby from9:30–10:00 a.m.

Please note: Free Radicals and CHEMillenniums will have separate Eraevents this year. Watch for a special mailing.

AIChE Reception for Alumni and FriendsNovember 10 7:00–8:30 p.m.

Location TBA, Nashville, TNJoin chemical engineering chair Jeff Reimer at thisannual alumni and friends reception held in connectionwith the AIChE Annual Meeting. Check online for moredetails as the date approaches.

“Alumni of the G. N. Lewis Era” LuncheonNovember 19 12:00–2:00 p.m.

Howard Room, The Faculty ClubPlease save the date! Alumni and friends from thepre-1945 graduating years are invited to attend thisannual luncheon. Look for a separate mailing in the fall.

+ For alumni events, visit chemistry.berkeley.edu/alumni/events.html

background image: rayograph courtesy of michelle douskey

nonprofit org.u.s. postage paiduniversity of california

Documents

Catalyst Magazine V 4.1