Awards

• Glass Receives Coatings Award
• Garcia-Meitin Wins Technician Award
• Fenselau Receives Hillebrand Award
• Chen Garners Hackerman Award
• Seshadri Is 2005 ExxonMobil Fellow

Glass Receives Coatings Award

A professor of polymers and coatings at North Dakota State University, D. Edward Glass has been selected to receive the 2005 Roy W. Tess Award in Coatings of the American Chemical Society Division of Polymeric Materials: Science & Engineering. The award is given out to recognize outstanding achievements in coatings science, technology, and engineering. Glass will officially receive the award on Aug. 29 at the fall ACS national meeting in Washington, D.C.

Glass was cited for his expertise in water-soluble polymers and waterborne coatings. He received a B.S. in chemistry from Louisiana State University in 1959 and a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry from Purdue University in 1964. Glass started at Union Carbide in 1963, where we worked on polyvinyl chloride production facilities. He joined North Dakota State's faculty in 1980 and has since focused on synthesis, characterization, and application studies of surfactant-modified, water-soluble polymers, as well as other topics.

Garcia-Meitin Wins Technician Award

At the spring national meeting in San Diego, ACS's Division of Chemical Technicians awarded the 2005 National ACS Chemical Technician Award to Eddy Garcia-Meitin of Dow Chemical. The award recognizes technical and communication skills, safety, reliability, leadership, teamwork, publications, and presentations, along with other professional and community activities.

Garcia-Meitin was selected for his expertise in scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, digital image analysis, microtomy, failure-mechanism and failure-mode identification, and optical microscopy. He was also cited for his ability to solve difficult microscopy problems, to suggest research approaches based on microscopy data, and to manage a wide range of projects.

During his career, Garcia-Meitin has familiarized himself with many different chemical products, including polyurethanes, polyethylene, polypropylene, various rubbers and elastomers, epoxy resins, thermoplastics, polyvinylidene chloride, and nanocomposite-hybrid materials. He has coauthored 12 external publications and chapters in three textbooks on polymer toughening and elastomers.

Fenselau Receives Hillebrand Award

Catherine C. Fenselau, a professor and past chair of the department of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland, received the 2005 Hillebrand Prize of the Chemical Society of Washington (CSW), the ACS Washington, D.C., section, on March 10. She was cited for the development of rapid biodetection methods based on mass spectrometry and bioinformatics. She also delivered her Hillebrand lecture, "Rapid Analysis of Microorganisms by Mass Spectrometry," at the ceremony, which was part of CSW's March meeting.

Fenselau's research addresses biological mass spectrometry, proteomics, and the chemistry of conjugated drug metabolites. Her work on advanced biodetection systems has led to developments in the rapid medical diagnosis, monitoring, and control of the spread of highly contagious diseases. It may also provide timely recognition and identification of biohazards, particularly those associated with terrorism.

Chen Garners Hackerman Award

Z hijian (James) Chen, an associate professor in the department of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, received the 2005 Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research on Jan. 19. The Welch Foundation has presented the $100,000 award annually since 2001 to an up-and-coming scientist at a Texas institution who is age 40 or younger. Chen received the prize money and a crystal sculpture at a luncheon on the UT Southwestern campus.

Chen is being honored for a number of achievements in biochemistry. His best known work involves ubiquitin, a small protein nicknamed "the kiss of death" for its role in targeting other proteins for destruction. Chen countered prevailing thoughts on the protein's role when he discovered, through meticulous testing, that ubiquitin also plays a role in activating proteins.

His other work includes isolating and cloning E2-25K (or HIP2), an important enzyme in the ubiquitin pathway; reconstituting the T-cell signaling pathway in vitro using purified proteins; and developing assays to identify and optimize Velcade, a Food & Drug Administration-approved myeloma treatment.

Seshadri Is 2005 ExxonMobil Fellow

Ram Seshadri, an assistant professor in the materials department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will receive the 2005 ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Faculty Fellowship at the ACS national meeting in Washington, D.C., in August. Administered by the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry and made possible by support from the ExxonMobil Foundation, the award recognizes significant contributions to solid-state chemistry by an untenured faculty member at a U.S. institution.

Seshadri's research spans a wide range of topics involving solid-state inorganic synthesis combined with property measurements and theoretical modeling. He and his coworkers examined detailed structure-composition-property relations in various magnetic materials and developed guidelines for the preparation of new magnetoresistive materials, magnetic semiconductors, and materials that are half metallic. In addition, the Seshadri group has been working on preparing nanoparticles of complex magnetic oxides and chalcogenides, and on developing template-free synthetic routes to monoliths of macroporous inorganic materials, including rock salt MnO, rutile TiO₂, and functional perovskites and spinels.

Colleagues describe Seshadri as a gifted experimentalist who has developed several elegant materials synthesis strategies. He was also commended for his efforts in getting students at all levels, including grade school, interested in science.