Register now for the virtual workshop on May 25-26, 2021Freeman A. Hrabowski, III
President
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, U.S.
Geraldine (Geri) Richmond
Presidential Chair in Science and Professor of Chemistry
University of Oregon, U.S.
Tuesday, May 25-Wednesday, May 26, 2021
The Electrochemical Society is proud to announce the Society’s distinguished members recognized as 2020 Highly Cited Researchers. The prestigious list, published by the Web of Science Group at Clarivate Analytics, identifies scientists and social scientists who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers. (more…)
The National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, and German Research Foundation are sponsoring a workshop on Electroorganic Chemistry: From Synthesis to Chemical Manufacturing on February 13-14, 2020 in Alexandria, VA. (more…)
Congratulations to Siegfried R. Waldvogel who received the 2020 ECS Organic and Biological Electrochemistry Division Manuel M. Baizer Award in recognition of his significant contributions to the field of organic electrochemistry. The award is sponsored by The Electrosynthesis Company, Inc. and Monsanto Company. A symposium and reception in his honor will be held at the 237th ECS Meeting with IMCS 2020.
Waldvogel received his PhD in 1996 from the University of Bochum/Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research. After postdoctoral research at the Scripps Research Institute, he worked at the University of Münster, then as professor of organic chemistry at the University of Bonn. Waldvogel became a full professor in 2010 at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He has recently been named the director of the Gutenberg University Forschungskollegs.
Allen J. Bard
Allen J. Bard, regarded as the “father of modern electrochemistry,” was recently announced the winner of the 2019 King Faisal International Prize in Science. According to UT NEWS, the University of Texas at Austin professor of chemistry received $200,000 and a gold medal from the King Faisal Foundation, as a result of the big win.
Bard, an ECS member for over 50 years, is a big believer in chemistry—the chemistry found among people.
“There’s a chemistry that can develop in a group, and that chemistry can lead to very good science,” says Bard.
So it’s no surprise that his team player mentality has indeed led him to “very good science,” so good it earned him the international award, given to only those who have made outstanding contributions in physics, chemistry, biology, or mathematics through original scientific research that brings major benefits to humanity.
New research is building a bridge from nature’s chemistry to greener, more efficient synthetic chemistry.
Researchers analyzed biocatalysts evolved by nature for their effectiveness in a variety of synthetic chemical reactions. The results, published in Nature Chemistry, open the door to promising practices for chemists, pointing to not only more efficient but also more powerful tools for chemists.
The researchers started with microorganisms that have, over the millennia, developed complex chemical reactions to create molecules with important biological activity for various purposes, such as defense mechanisms. The scientists then analyzed the chemical pathways that give rise to these potentially useful molecules to determine how they can be repurposed to create compounds synthetically in the lab.
“Nature has evolved catalytic tools that would enable chemists to build molecules that we can’t easily build just using traditional chemistry,” says senior study author Alison Narayan, assistant professor at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute. “Our work bridges the two worlds of biosynthesis and synthetic chemistry.”
By: Timothy J. Jorgensen, Georgetown University
Ask people to name the most famous historical woman of science and their answer will likely be: Madame Marie Curie. Push further and ask what she did, and they might say it was something related to radioactivity. (She actually discovered the radioisotopes radium and polonium.) Some might also know that she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. (She actually won two.)
But few will know she was also a major hero of World War I. In fact, a visitor to her Paris laboratory in October of 1917 – 100 years ago this month – would not have found either her or her radium on the premises. Her radium was in hiding and she was at war.
For Curie, the war started in early 1914, as German troops headed toward her hometown of Paris. She knew her scientific research needed to be put on hold. So she gathered her entire stock of radium, put it in a lead-lined container, transported it by train to Bordeaux – 375 miles away from Paris – and left it in a safety deposit box at a local bank. She then returned to Paris, confident that she would reclaim her radium after France had won the war.
With the subject of her life’s work hidden far away, she now needed something else to do. Rather than flee the turmoil, she decided to join in the fight. But just how could a middle-aged woman do that? She decided to redirect her scientific skills toward the war effort; not to make weapons, but to save lives.
Scientists have found that a common enzyme can speed up—by 500 times—the rate-limiting part of the chemical reaction that helps the Earth lock away, or sequester, carbon dioxide in the ocean.
“While the new paper is about a basic chemical mechanism, the implication is that we might better mimic the natural process that stores carbon dioxide in the ocean,” says lead author Adam Subhas, a California Institute of Technology (Caltech) graduate student.
The researchers used isotopic labeling and two methods for measuring isotope ratios in solutions and solids to study calcite—a form of calcium carbonate—dissolving in seawater and measure how fast it occurs at a molecular level.
It all started with a very simple, very basic problem: measuring how long it takes for calcite to dissolve in seawater.
“Although a seemingly straightforward problem, the kinetics of the reaction is poorly understood,” says Berelson, professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Sarah Baker measures the amount of methanol produced by the enzyme-embedded polymer.
Image: George Kitrinos/LLNL
A new study has emerged from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory demonstrating that through the combination of biology and 3-D printing, scientists can turn methane into methanol.
In recent years, methanol has shown a lot of promise as a clean burning fuel. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the alcohol’s high-performance and low emission levels could make it an ideal alternative to gasoline for cars.
On the other hand, methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is adding to the acceleration of climate change. While the chemical compound does not stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, it is 84 times more potent due to its ability to effectively absorb the sun’s heat and warm the atmosphere. In fact, methane has outpaced carbon dioxide in climate change impact over the least 100 years, with methane’s impact being 25 times greater.
The development from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory not only provide a clean burning fuel alternative, it effectively helps combat the pressing effects of climate change.
A giant among giantsHarry Kroto, distinguished chemist and pioneering nanocarbons researcher, passed away on April 30, 2016 at the age of 76. Kroto, a giant among giants, made an immense impact not only on ECS and its scientific discipline – but the world at large.
“Harry Kroto’s passing is a great loss to science and society as a whole,” says Bruce Weisman, professor at Rice University and division chair of the ECS Nanocarbons Division. “He was an exceptional researcher whose 1985 work with Rick Smalley and Bob Curl launched the field of nanocarbons research and nanotechnology.”
That work conducted by Kroto, Smalley, and Curl yielded the discovery of the C60 structure that became known as the buckminsterfullerene (or the “buckyball” for short). Prior to this breakthrough, there were only two known forms of pure carbon: graphite and diamond. The work opened a new branch in chemistry with unbound possibilities, earning the scientists the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The field of nanocarbons and fullerenes, since the discovery by Kroto and company, has evolved into an area with almost limitless potential. The applications for this scientific discipline are wide-ranging – from energy harvesting to sensing and biosensing to biomedical applications and far beyond. Research in this field continues to fill the pages of scholarly journals, making possible innovations that were not even conceived before the seminal 1985 work.
