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Environment

ACS Focuses On Biotech For Health In Boston

Many events were recorded and are available online

by Linda Raber
August 27, 2007 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 85, Issue 35

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Credit: Linda Wang/C&EN
Credit: Linda Wang/C&EN

"BIOTECHNOLOGY for Health & Wellness" was the theme of the 234th ACS National Meeting & Exposition held in Boston. More than half of the ACS technical divisions cooperated to present 50 symposia in support of this theme.

Under this banner was the meeting's kickoff, a presidential session titled "Material Innovations: From Nanotech to Biotech & Beyond." This program, which will be podcast at www.acspresident.org, featured forward-looking presentations from superstars in the fields of chemistry and materials. It was a standing-room-only event.

Other thematic programming included "The Chemistry of Systems Biology," organized by Les McQuire of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, and "Nutritional Genomics," headed up by John Finley of Louisiana State University.

It was a big meeting. Altogether, ACS in Boston attracted 15,344 registrants. Of these, 8,792 were regular registrants, 3,518 were students, 1,676 were exhibitors, 784 registered for the exposition only, and 574 were registered as guests. The exposition of scientific equipment and software attracted 324 exhibitors in 509 booths and included 16 workshops. In total, 9,560 papers were presented in 844 half-day oral sessions and 97 poster sessions.

The Division of Analytical Chemistry and C&EN presented the first Analytical Pavilion, which brought instrumentation manufacturers, users, and leaders in pharma together at the expo to share the latest information on analytical tools. A podcast of the pharma representatives' presentations is at www.cen-online.org/boston07/ and will remain there for 30 days.

Also at the meeting, ACS named 22 Heroes of Chemistry for creating new drugs or other products and inventing environmentally friendly and more effective technologies. The chemists were members of multidisciplinary teams from Chevron Phillips Chemical; DuPont, with partners Genencor International and Tate & Lyle; ExxonMobil Research & Engineering; Novartis; and Pfizer.

The ninth annual ChemLuminary Awards celebrated volunteer service to ACS by divisions and local sections. Twelve ACS committees presented 40 awards to six technical divisions and 27 local sections. Morton Z. Hoffman, winner of the 2007 ACS Award for Volunteer Service, delivered an inspiring and poetic keynote address, titled "The Time of Your Life."

Also at the meeting, the ACS Board of Directors approved funding for a pilot state government affairs program built upon the successes of ACS activities at the federal level—particularly in K-12 education. This action comes in the wake of President George W. Bush's recent signing of the America Creating Opportunities To Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education & Science Act (America Competes Act), which ACS promoted strongly.

Specifically, the America Competes Act authorizes $43.3 billion to foster U.S. research and science education. Much of the funding will be used for science education, which is controlled at the state level.

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