wound healing. He studied the effect that quadrol had on wound healing acceleration which later turned into an interest in the biochemistry of NO and its effect on wound healing. He developed meth-ods for electrospinning bio-compatible polymers that allowed production of NO as wound dressings.

Because Dan’s range of bio-chemical interest was very broad, he pursued his inter-ests drawing on different ar-eas of chemistry and engi-neering. As the founding member of the Biochemistry division of the department, he helped build a foundation leading to the establishment of the BS in Biochemistry. Dan will be remembered for his contributions to the de-partment through his teaching and research expertise. We wish him a happy and healthy retirement as Professor of Chemistry Emeritus.

Dr. Daniel J. Smith, Profes-sor of Chemistry in the Bio-chemistry division of the De-partment of Chemistry, retired on May 30 after 34 years of service. Dan joined the de-partment in 1977 as the first Biochemistry faculty member. He came from UCLA where he was first a post-doctoral researcher in the laboratory of Professor P. D. Boyer and then an Adjunct Assistant Professor. He had obtained his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, work-ing with Professor George Kenyon, and his BS in Chem-istry from The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. In between his undergraduate degree and his PhD, he spent two years in the US Army, serving in Viet Nam.

When Dan came to Akron, NEOUCOM had just formed and Dan was hired to prepare the pre-medical students for the rigors of medical school. In his career he created courses in Biochemistry, Nu-

tritional Biochemistry, Enzy-mology, Advanced Metabo-lism, and Biology of Wound Repair, to mention a few. He was a joint faculty member at NEOUCOM, in Biomedical Engineering and Faculty Re-search Associate in the Insti-tute of Polymer Science.

During his long career, Dan mentored more than 34 PhD students, 13 MS students and many undergraduate re-searchers. He and his stu-dents were responsible for more than 75 publications, 38 patents awarded or pending, and more than 50 govern-ment and industrial research grants. He was recognized for his research and teaching through awards from Northern Ohio Live magazine, NorTech, and Ohio magazine. His patents earned him a place on the Research Foun-dation’s Wall of Fame.

Early in his career, Dan fo-cused on enzymology. Later, he became interested in the biological mechanisms of

Dr. Daniel Smith Retires After 34 Years

Chemistry Department News

Special points of interest:

• Dan Smith, Pro-fessor Emeritus

• Knight Lecture

• Spring 2010 Graduates

• Service Awards

• Research News

Buchtel College Department of Chemistry May 2010 Volume 2, issue 1

Inside this issue:

24th Knight Lecture by Dr. El-Sayed

2

Fall UG and Grad Degrees

3

Service Awards and Spring Picnic

4

Research News 5

Faculty and Alumni News

5

Chemistry Department News UACHEM

Left: Dan with his new cane. Right: Dan with his daughter Ashley

On April 12 and 14, Dr. M. El-Sayed delivered a pair of lec-tures for the 24th annual Knight Lecture. Dr. El-Sayed (E), the Julius Brown and Re-gent’s Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, is one of the most preeminent physi-cal chemists in the world. His many awards include the Alex-ander van Humbolt Senior Fellowship, as well as Sloan and Gugenheim Fellowships. His early work was in the area of molecular photophysics, where he made many funda-mental contributions to the theory of radiative and non-radiative energy transfer proc-esses. His recent work has focused on the optical and photothermal properties of nanoparticles, nanocatalysis, nanomedicine, and nanobiol-ogy. The lectures he deliv-ered were “What is the Hype about Nanotechnology,” and “Confining Resonant Photons to the Nano-gold Length Scale: New Properties and Applications in Materials Sci-ence, Nano-biology, and Can-cer Nano-medicine.”

The annual Knight Lecture Awards Banquet was held on April 12 attended by alumn Dr. Henry Stevens (H).

Graduate students receiving awards were (G): Anna Pischera—The Wilson NMR Award, Xiaohong Li—The Department NMR Award, Jo-anna Beres, David Bowers, and Anthony Schultz—Outstanding Graduate Teach-ing Assistants, Madalis Ca-siano-Maldonado, Amanda Knapp, Zin-Min Tun and Syl-vester Twagirayezu—Stevens Chemistry Fellowships.

Undergraduates receiving awards were: Patrick Wagers -Faculty Award (B), Shayna Robinson– Cassidy Scholar-ship, Rakesh Patel—The John Franklin Coleman Scholarship, Kristen Reams—The Exxon Scholarship (I), Marlena, Abra-

ham, Josh Davidson, Anna Ganios, David Meranda, and Brittany Riordan—Emmanuel and Rose Gurin Scholarships (F), Hiya Qayyum, Harrison Scholarship, Jennifer Knapp—Lancaster Scholarship, Derek Scavuzzo, Rita Kramer, Mor-gan Sipka, and Noah Stal-cup—Lubrizol Scholarships, Mateen Haque—Merck Index Award, Natalie Dahmen, Willis Lecorchik, Anthony Miller, Parth Patel, Nicholas Popczun, and Katie Stimpler—Muehlstein Scholarships (A), Francesca DeSantos, Kortney Kersten, Jillian Parker, and Michael Workman—McClellan Scholarships (C), Louis Brit-ton—Murphy Scholarship, Christopher Elkins– Petro-Tex Scholarship, Lucas McDonald– Robinson Scholarship, Renee Reisinger, Simmons Scholarship, Angela Dimos, Hangfeng Hu, and Hillary Ray—Stratka Scholarships for Women (D), and Christine Tsimpris– SACP Award.

Congratulations to all awardees, and thank you for all the hard work you put forth this year.

Volume 2, issue 1 Page 2

24th Knight Lecture Given by Professor Mostafa A. El-Sayed

This spring semester, 11 undergraduates earned bachelors degrees in chemistry. The new chem-istry alumni:

David M. Besse, BS Chemistry with Polymer Option, will be attending graduate school at Duke; Ryan Cantasey, BS Bio-chemistry, will attend graduate school at CWRU ; Megan Cesta, BS Biochemistry, will be at-tending Medical School; Kaitlin Glover, BS Bio-chemistry, will be attending Dentistry School, Penny Gray, BA Chemistry, will be working at Goodyear; Lucas Grossman, BS Chemistry; Jacqueline Klayko, BA Chemistry; Brittany Petrosky, BS Biochemistry, will attend

Pharmacy School; Chris-tina Tsimpris, BS Chemis-try; Patrick Wagers, BS Chemistry, will be attend-ing graduate school at UA; Colin Wright, BS Chemis-try Polymer Option, will be attending graduate school in Polymer Science at UA.

Congratulations to all.

Spring 2010 Graduates

Graduate Students Earn Degrees Spring ‘10 One new PhD alum and one MS alum received degrees at the 2010 Spring Com-mencement. We congratu-late both for their hard work and thank them for their contributions to the depart-ment.

Nilufer Solak, PhD: “Structural Characteri-zation and Quantitative Analysis by Interfacing Liquid Chrmoatography and/or Ion Mobility Separation with Multi-Dimensional Mass Spec-trometry.”

Dayanand B. Katakdond, MS: “Synthetic Development of an Non-invastive Glucose Sensing Technique.”

Volume 2, issue 1 Page 3

Upper: Megan Cesta and Kaitlin Glover. Above, left to right: Lucas Grossman, Brittany Petrosky, Christina Tsimpris. Left: Colin Wright.

Left: Nilufer Solak. Right: Dayand Katakdond

On Thursday, April 8, the Uni-versity recognized the out-standing service of faculty and staff at the annual Service Awards Ceremony. The awards are presented based on years of service. In the Chemistry Department, the following were recognized: 5 years of service – Dr. Yi Pang, Lester and Catherine Coleman Associate Professor of Chemistry ; 10 years of service - Dr. Takashige Fuji-wara, post-doctoral re-searcher collaborating with Dr. Ed Lim Goodyear Profes-sor of Chemistry, Mrs. Jean

Garcia, Department secretary, and Dr. Chris Ziegler, Associ-ate Professor of Chemistry; 20 years of service – Dr. Claire Tessier, Professor of Chemis-try and Dr. Wiley Youngs, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry; 35 years of ser-vice - Mrs Phyllis Hughley, secretary to Dr. Ed Lim.

We want to add our apprecia-tion to that expressed by the University for all the excellent work these individuals have contributed to the Department of Chemistry.

Staff and Faculty recognized for University Service

End of Semester Picnic Highlights The annual end-of-semester picnic was held outside Knight Chemical Lab on Thursday, April 29. The weather was beautiful and set the back-ground for the end of a perfect semester.

Here are some pictures from the picnic:

Volume 2, issue 1 Page 4

Top (l to r): Jean Garcia, Phyllis Hughley. Bottom (l to r) Chris Ziegler, and Claire Tessier

$62,000.

Yi Pang, AFOSR, “Separation of Armchair SWNTs by Using Polymer Conformation-Guided Assemble,” $330,000.

Peter Rinaldi, NSF, “GOALI: Ad-vanced NMR Studies of Fluoropoly-mers,” $10,000.

The faculty continue to receive re-search support from national funding agencies.

Grants

Jun Hu, Austen BioInnovation Insti-tute, “Invent a liquid crystal film for contact lenses that can be used to noninvasively monitor blood-sugar levels of diabetic patients,” $100,000.

Matt Espe and David Modarelli, AFOSR, “Hybrid Solid-State Photo-voltaic Materials and Devices,”

Grants, Contracts and Patents News

Volume 2, issue 1 Page 5

Faculty and Alumni News Chris Ziegler had two papers se-lected for the cover of journals. The journals were Chemical Communica-tions and Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines

Chrys Wesdemiotis had his re-search featured in Chemical & Engi-neering News 2010, 88(13), 35-37 (based on invited lecture presented at the 2010 PittCon Conference in

Orlando, FL. He was also recog-nized as “best reviewer” for the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry at the Society’s 58th Annual Conference in Salt Lake City, UT

David Perry was awarded the Glen H. Brown Distinguished Service Award presented by the Akron Sec-tion of the American Chemical Soci-ety for 2010.