Chemistry Department

NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Eight students from PSU attended the 53rd Pentasectional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Duncan, Oklahoma on March 8. Of the five presentations given by students from Dr. Paul's group, four were given by undergraduates.

Senior chemistry major, Semonti Sinharoy, attended the Society of Plastics Engineers' Global Plastics Environmental Conference in Orlando, Florida on March 11. Her poster took first place honors among undergraduate student poster presentations.

Dr. Jame McAfee of the Department of Chemistry is one of PSU's "Outstanding Faculty Award" winners. He was presented the award at the March 6 Apple Day convocation. Three PSU faculty are given the award each year. The winners are nominated and selected by students. Congratulations to Dr. McAfee.

2007 News and Announcements

The Chemistry Department is offering a new Polymer Chemistry course for the Spring semester as part of our renewed emphasis on polymers. This course "Advanced Polymers" is open to undergraduates as CHEM 705 and to graduate students as CHEM 815. This does not take the place of CHEM 620/621 Polymer Chemistry which is also offered in the Spring semester.

The Department was well represented with 7 presentations at the 42nd Midwest Regional ACS Meeting in Kansas City held Nov. 7-10. Five of our undergraduate students were authors or coauthors. Faculty, graduate students, and 7 undergraduates attended.

For the second year in a row, the department participated in the Arkansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) conference on November, 9-10. Six chemistry students from Dr. Paul and Dr. McAfee’s laboratories presented posters on their undergraduate research. Yury Kuzmichev won second place in the chemistry and biochemistry category.

Several changes in faculty positions have occurred recently. Dr. Bipin Shah is a new assistant professor. Dr. George Weeks is a new instructor in the department. Dr. Irene Zegar has recently become an assistant professor after holding an instructor position for several years. Both Dr. Robert Pavlis and Dr. Peter Hamlet retired before the Fall semester.

The library now subscribes to the online search engine "SciFinder Scholar". Searching the chemical literature online is now a seamless experience with full text access to all American Chemical Society Journals.

Observe the liquid crystalline decyloxybenzoic acid form nematic, smectic and two solid phases.