Dr. Gerald Koser, a Depart-ment of Chemistry faculty member gained high profes-sional honors within recent months. Koser, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, was named winner of the 2009 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Research and Applications of Iodine Chemistry. The award is sponsored by SQM S.A., a Chilean corporation noted for its iodine based products. Koser will formally receive the award at a special ceremony during the 237th National ACS Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, March 24. Consisting of a $10,000 certificate and travel expenses to the meet-ing, it is awarded biennially. Koser joined the university in 1969, retiring in 2005. He was promoted to Distin-guished Professor in 2001 and served as Department

Chair from 1996 to 1999. He is well known for his work on hypervalent iodine com-pounds, especially Koser’s reagent, and their use in or-ganic synthesis.

Dr. Koser has explored the use of hypervalent iodine compounds and iodonium ylides in many organic syn-thetic transformations. He is responsible for reopening the interest of the organic com-munity in this class of com-pounds.

In addition to the vast amount of synthetic and mechanistic work he produced, he was a committed teacher. He was recognized as a premier or-ganic lecturer in both the un-dergraduate and graduate courses.

Dr. Koser Wins ACS Award for Iodine Chemistry

2008-2009 Marks First Year of BS in Biochemistry curriculum

Approved by the Ohio Board of Regents in 2007, this marks the first year that all the courses required for the BS in Biochemistry degree will be offered.

The BS Biochemistry com-bines a basic chemistry cur-riculum with the molecular based material in a biology curriculum. To develop the curriculum, the Department of Chemistry introduced two new courses specific for Bio-chemistry. These courses are Physical Chemistry for

Biochemists and Biochemistry Laboratory.

This last Fall semester, the new physical chemistry course was unveiled by David Perry. This Spring semester, Kim Calvo initiated the Biochemistry Laboratory course.

Even though the degree was only approved one and half years ago, we currently have 18 students pursuing the de-gree and expect to have our first graduate at this Spring’s

Chemistry Department News

Special points of interest:

• Koser wins Na-tional ACS award

• BS in Biochemis-try initiated

• $80,000 in scholarships awarded at An-nual Knight Lec-ture banquet

• Dr. Robert Morse presents the 2009 Knight Lecture

The Department of Chemistry, The University of Akron A monthly newsletter for faculty, graduate

students, undergraduates,

alumni, and friends

March 2009

Inside this issue:

Knight Lecture 2

Student Awards 2

Graduates 3

Staff changes 3

Grants, Contracts and Patents

4

Faculty News 4

UACHEM

Loading an SDS-PAGE gel in biochemistry lab.

A recent issue of C&EN tells about his work: http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/87/i06/html/8706awards3.html

The 2009 Knight Lecturer was Dr. Daniel E. Morse of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dr. Morse is the Wilcox Pro-fessor of Biomolecular Sci-ence and Engineering and the director of the UCSB-MIT-Caltech Institute fro Collabora-tive Biotechnologies.

He is known as the developer of “silicon biotechnology”, and his current work is on the in-terface biotechnology and materials science. He has made major innovations in low-temperature nanofabrication of semiconductors for solar

energy conversion, batteries, IR detectors, catalysts and bio-inspired adaptive optical ma-terials.

He presented two lectures: “Learning from Nature: Bio-logically Inspired, Low-Temperature Nanofabrication of Semiconductors and Ferro-electric Thin Films and Nanoparticles”, and Dynami-cally Adaptive Biophotonics: Protein Phosphorylation Drives Changes in Irides-cence in Squid, Inspiring New Approaches to Dynamically Tunable Optical Materials and New Pathways for Encoding

Self-Assembly and Emergent Properties”. The lectures were February 26 and 27.

Dr. Daniel E. Morse: the 2009 Knight Lecturer

2009 Undergraduate and Graduate Scholarship and Award Recipients

Petrotex Scholarship: Brett Sitzler

Dr. William R. Murphy Jr. Scholarship: Paul Misseldine

Harold G. Cassidy Scholarship: Rita Kramer

Arthur L. Robinson Scholarship: Jac-queline Klayco

Faculty Senior Research Award: Caro-line Gallo

Graduate Scholarships and Awards

Dr. Henry C. and Mrs. Jean Stevens Award: Saovaliak Sripothingak, Zin-Min Tun, Vincenzo Scionti

Dr. G. Edwin and Mrs. Wilson Award for NMR: Xiaohung Li

The Department of Chemistry NMR Award: Anna Pischera

The Department of Chemistry Gradu-ate Teaching Assistant Award: Cody Anderson, Aaron Lineberry, Sarah Phil-lips, Nikki Robishaw, Tim Smith, Heather Steele

Thirty-five undergraduate and graduate stu-dents received more than $80,000 in scholar-ships and awards at the 2009 Knight Lecture banquet held Feb. 27.

Undergraduate Scholarship and Awards

Leora Stratka Scholarship: Caroline Gallo, Megan Cesta, Christina Tsimperas

Emanuel and Rose Gurin Scholarship: Dustin Schrom, David Besse, Ryan Canatsey, Hilary Ray

Exxon Corporation Scholarship: David Mer-anda

G. Maxine and James Harwood Scholarship: Colin Wright

John Franklin Coleman Scholarship: Joseph Scavuzzo

Ernest E. and Lois M. McClellan Scholarship: Anthony Miller, Christina Coleman

Julius Muehlstein Scholarship: Joseph Pow-ell, Patrick Wagers

Lubrizol Corporation Scholarship: Corey Groff, Caitlin Glover, Hira Qayyum, Ashley Alli-son

M. M. Harrison Scholarship: Louis Britton

H.E. Simmons Scholarship: Noah Stalcup

March 2009

Dr. Daniel E. Morse, Wilcox Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Page 2

Front: (l to r) Caitlin Glover, Megan Cesta, back: (l to r) Aaron Johnson, Ryan Ca-natsey, Corey Goff

Front (l to r): Caroline Gallo, Christina Tsimpiris Back (l to r): David Besse, Louis Britton, Pat Wagers, Colin Wright, Paul Misseldine

We are pleased to wel-come the following stu-dents to the distinguioshed ranks of Chemistry Depart-ment Alumni.

BS Chemistry : James Engle

BS with Polymer Option : Renee M. Weber

BA Chemistry : John P. O’Brien, Tariq Farooki

MS Chemistry : Natalie Barone “The Synthesis and Characterization of Oxygen Containing Por-phyrin Analogs and Rhe-nium Coordination Chemis-try for Diagnostic Imaging”, NarinThanamongkollit “Modification of Tung Oil for Bio-Based Coating”,

Zin-Min Tun “Interactions of Group 13 Lewis Acids with Hexachloro-cyclotriphosphazene”,

PhD Chemistry : Kittisak-Chaicharoen “Mass and Tandem Mass Spectromet-ric Studies on Synthetic Polymers”, Chanda Elam “Synthesis and Functional-ity of Polymeric Diazenium-diolates in the Use and Control of Nitric Oxide Re-lease for Severe Medicinal Atherosclerotic Plaque Ap-plications and Human Papillornavirus Treatment, Khadijah Hindi “The Me-dicinal/Pharmaceutical Ap-plications of Imidazolium Carbene Metal Com-plexes”, Nuttara Jarmon-nak “(Epislon)-Acety-Lysine Analogs: Synthesis and Application”, Douglas

Medvetz “The Synthesis, Characterization and Anti-tumor Properties of Ag(I), Cu(II), and Ru (III) Metal Complexes”, Tammy Sicil-iano “A Stability Compari-son and Antimicrobial Evaluation of Gold N-Heterocyclic Carbenes and Their Silver Precursors”, Silapong Baiagern “Multidimensional Studies of Polymers”, Paul Custer “Transition Metal Coordina-tion for the Construction of Supramolecular Mole-cules”, Wendy Lewis “Study of the Chain Dy-namics of Polyaniline by Solid-State NMR”, Sara Witson “The Development, Implementation and Appli-cation of Ambient Ioniza-tion Mass Spectrometry to Complex Polymeric Sys-tems”

Summer and Fall 2008 Graduates

March 2009 Page 3

Some our recent graduates. Above, top to bottom: Doug Medvetz and Khadiah Hindi. Left, from left to right: Nuttara Jammonak, Narin Thanamong-kolit, and Kittisak Chaicharoen

Staff changes in the chemistry department

With the retirement of Don Sidaway, Jose Arbutal was named Chemical Storekeeper for the Organic Chemistry Labs. Mr. Arbutal, who had previously held a position at Will Research, has a B.S. in Biology from Kent State Uni-versity. Jose, who started February first, says he is “happy and excited to be able to assist students and fac-ulty”. Although he acknowl

edges there is a lot to learn, he has already started to up-date the stockroom with new shelving.

Dr. Joseph Massey who had been the network manager for the NMR laboratory, was named Director of Technol-ogy in Chemistry. Joe’s job responsibilities remain essen-tially as they were in the past, and this promotion reflects

having a reliable network for the transmission of instru-mental data given our ex-panded department based instrument centers.

Dr. Todd Wagler was cho-sen to replace the retiring Supervisor of Chemical Laboratories, Dr. William Schloman. He was previ-ously a Senior Research Associate in the NMR Lab.

(l to r) Jose Arbutal, Todd Wagler

Todd has been very active in assisting in the development of the freshman laboratory. He has worked to switch from the old PC based data acquisition system to one based on hand held data loggers. He has also taken steps to update the third floor chemical stockroom.

Jean Garcia was recently cho-sen as the Departmental Secre-tary, replacing Jeannette Kon-tac. Jeannette left the chemistry department to work in the Col-lege of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering. Jean previously held the position of Administrative Assistant in the Department of Sociology.

Dr. Xiopeng Li is the new Man-ager of the Mass Spectrometer Laboratory . Dr. Li is a Decem-ber 2008 graduate of Cleveland

State University where he earned his PhD in chemistry with emphasis on mass spec-trometry.

Dr. Venkat Dudipala remains as the Manager of the NMR Lab for solution NMR. Dr. Ming Ming Guo is the Man-ager of the NMR Lab for Solid NMR. Simon Stakleff was recently named Assistant Di-rector of the NMR lab.

nating chemistry depart-ment volunteers for the Science Olympiad to be held March 14 this year. The department will play host to a total of 10 events. Beth Subel, Melinda Carnahan, and Tatiana Eliseeva along with Dr. Dono-van are supervising events, and Danijela Smiljanic

Dr. Weiping Zheng has been invited to be a ses-sion chair at the Enzymes, Coenzymes & Metabolic Pathways Gordon Confer-ence this summer. The session is titled “Chromatin Remodeling and Transcrip-tion”.

Dr. Bill Donovan is coordi-

and Dolly Casiano will be helping Beth and Melinda. Dr. Henry Stevens will also be there to assist.

Faculty News

Grant and Research Support

$16,000 from DOE

Peter Rinaldi: $10,000 from OMNOVA

Chrys Wesdemiotis: $788,600 from NSF

Bill Donovan: $10,000 from NSF

Dr. Yi Pang: $75,000 from NASA

Dr. David Perry: $122,000 from DOE

Dr. Dan Smith: $20,100 from SNS Nano-fiber Technology LLC

Dr. Chrys Wesdemiotis: $19,095 from

Goodyear

Dr. Chris Ziegler: $104,000 from NSF

The following patents were awarded in this same period:

Jun Hu “Coulter Counter with a Plurality of Channels”

Chris Ziegler “Boron-Based Organic Cations and Related Methods”

Jun Hu “7-Ethynyl-2,4,9-Trithiaadamantane and Related methods”

The faculty in the department con-tinue to attract research funding. Last fiscal year, the department fac-ulty submitted 35 proposals to fed-eral, state and private agencies, 16 of those were funded for a total of $1,655,306.

For this fiscal year, the following pro-posals have been funded:

David Modarelli: $112,592 from NSF

Wiley Youngs: $25,000 and

March 2009 Page 4 Phyllis Hughely works as the secretary in the Molecular Spectroscopy Lab. Lisa Zickefoose is the Senior Budget and Fiscal Director.

Top (l to r) Simon Stak-leff, Dr. Peter Rinaldi, Joe Massey, Ming Ming Guo, Venkat Dudipala

Left (l to r) Jean Garcia, Nancy Homa, Lisa Zicke-foose