ACADEMIC OUTREACH WORKSHOP

Postdoctoral Research Positions Available

Postdoctoral research positions are occasionally available on a rotating basis in the research laboratories of our faculty. Interested Individuals should apply to the faculty member directly. A link to each faculty member's contact information and web site can be found here. Note: A postdoctoral researcher is an individual who has received a doctoral degree (or equivalent) from an accredited college or university and is engaged in a temporary and defined period of mentored advanced training to enhance the professional skills and research independence needed to pursue his or her career path. Basic Qualifications include: Ph.D.

CCB COMMUNITY

Congratulations to Darren Lipomi of the Whitesides Group, first prize winner in the science writing competition on the website Scientific Blogging! Darren's entry on the feasibility of plastic solar cells can be found on the site here.

Professor Sunney Xie has been named recipient of this year's E.O. Lawrence Award in Chemistry, from the US Dept. of Energy, for outstanding contributions in research and development supporting the Department of Energy and its missions. More specifically, Xie will be honored for his innovations in nonlinear Raman microscopy and highly sensitive vibrational imaging, his scientific leadership in establishing the field of single-molecule biophysical chemistry, and his seminal work in enzyme dynamics and live cell gene expression. He will receive a gold medal, a citation and $50,000 at a ceremony in Washington, DC early next year.

On Wednesday, December 8, 2009, family and colleagues gathered to celebrate Professor William N. Lipscomb, Jr.’s 90th birthday. Pictured are Jean Evans, Professor Lipscomb, Dr. Allen Aloise, Professor Roy Gordon, Dr. Shaw Huang, Professors E.J. Corey and James Anderson. (Photo courtesy J. Lavin.) For additional information on Professor Lipscomb’s research, scientific contributions and numerous awards, please visit http://wlipscomb.tripod.com/wnl_humor.html

Professor Tobias Ritter has been honored with several new faculty awards. Recently he received an NSF Career Award, with five years of $110,000 support annually. He has also been selected as an Air Force Young Investigator, an award providing $120,000 for each of three years for research on the preparation of palladium nanowires. He has also been designated the first recipient of the Bayer Early Excellence in Science Award 2009 in the "Chemistry" category for his detailed mechanistic investigations into fluorination reactions. The prize has been awarded by an independent scientific committee of the Bayer Science & Education Foundation. Professor Ritter will receive his Bayer award here in December. Ritter has also been named the recipient of the Eli Lilly Grantee award for 2009. The award comes with a two-year unrestricted research grant in the amount of $100,000. As part of the award, he will give a lecture at the 15th biennial Lilly Grantee Symposium to be held in Indianapolis in early March of 2012.

Congratulations to Professor Tobias Ritter, who has recently been awarded a Massachusetts Life Science Center Grant for New Investigators. With grant support for two years, the MLSC program seeks to spur innovative new research and advance the careers of new investigators who are working on cutting-edge life sciences research at Massachusetts research institutions.

The 2009 winner of the CINF-FIZ Scholarship for Scientific Excellence is Fieser Fellow Roel S. Sanchez-Carrera of the Aspuru-Guzik group. The CINF-FIZ Scholarship is awarded jointly by CINF, the Division of Chemical Information of the American Chemical Society (ACS), and Fachinformationszentrum Chemie Berlin. Each year, young scientists in the field of chemical information and related sciences may apply for the scholarship by submitting an abstract and poster of their work. Dr. Sanchez-Carrera received his award during the ACS fall meeting in Washington DC, on August 17, 2009.

Professor Adam Cohen recently spent two weeks developing science education programs in Liberia, visiting the Ministry of Education and interacting with teachers and students from high schools, medical institutes, colleges and universities. More detailed information on this fascinating visit and descriptions of projects, ongoing and planned, can be found at his Liberian Science website.

Assistant Professors Adam Cohen and Alan Aspuru-Guzik have been selected as recipients of the DARPA Young Faculty Award. The goal of the YFA program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their career on Department of Defense and National Security issues. Professor Cohen's project will use magnetic nanostructures to control the dynamics of electronic spins in bi-radical reactions, while Professor Aspuru-Guzik will design new architectures for simulating chemical systems with quantum computers.

Congratulations to Professor George Whitesides, the first recipient of the Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences! The prize, to be given biennially by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, recognizes exceptional and original research in a selected area of chemistry that has advanced the field in major ways. The award honors Professor Whitesides for his revolutionary advances in the chemistry of soft materials. He received his citation and a medal here in CCB on September 30th.