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both shorter articles (Notes) and lengthier ones (Articles),
the covers of which continue to be a highly desired forum
for authors to showcase art relating to their manuscripts.
NEWS FROM THE SCIENTIFIC
AND TECHNICAL STAFF:
TERRY (TED) O’CONNELL started his twenty-eighth year
with the Chemistry Department and enjoys his position as
Director of Technical Operations. He is responsible for new
equipment installations and any building renovations. In
the past year, the department acquired and installed over
$2,000,000 worth of research instrumentation, including: a
Bruker EMX-Plus EPR spectrometer, a Thermo LTQ Velos Ion
Trap LC/MS, a Bruker Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometer
(FTMS); a Perkin Elmer 2400 CHN/S Analyzer, and a Bruker
Autoflex III MALDI-TOF. He works closely with Senior Lab
Engineer PETE SERRINO and Research Scientist SANDIP
SUR, as well as ERIC LOBENSTINE and RAY TENG.
ERIC LOBENSTINE (Ph.D. ’81), Manager for Computers
and Network spent a significant amount of his time this past
year working with a University IT committee on a major
upgrade for the email service for both graduate students
and postdocs, to insure that our needs would be met. This
transition went (reasonably) smoothly at the end of May; so
many students were eager to play with the new system that it
took almost a week to move all the users’ emails! Eric is very
happy to announce that Hutchison Hall now has wireless
network access. Since it was one of the last academic buildings
on the River Campus without ubiquitous wireless access, Eric
has been pushing hard for this service for several years now.
On a personal note, Eric’s older Brian graduated Magna Cum
Laude in May, with a B.A. in Financial Economics and minors
in Chemistry and English. After an internship this summer at
Global Crossing, Brian is attending the Simon School in the fall
Eric Lobenstine with son, Brian, and wife, Jeanne
to work on his M.B.A. Ethan, Eric’s younger son, now a Senior
had a great summer working as an Orientation Leader for the
1200+ students who arrived for the 2010-2011 academic year.
RAY TENG (B.S. ’87, M.B.A. ’01) has been with the
University since 1987 and joined Chemistry in 2004 as
Research/Facility Coordinator. Ray brings many years of
experience to the Department, having previously worked
in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Nuclear
Structure Research Laboratory, and the Department of Earth
and Environmental Sciences as Senior Technical Associate. In
2009, minor renovations in Hutchison Hall were undertaken:
Room 468 was converted to a computer lab, B25 was renovated
for a new Bruker Low Temperature EPR, and office space
(431) was renovated for our new faculty hire, Oleg Prezhdo.
Ray continues to enjoy the daily interactions with faculty and
students in addressing research and facilities issues. Soccer
continues to play a big part in Ray’s spare time to which he
has now added “the college search” for D3 soccer schools.
Once a chemist has synthesized a new molecule, he or she
needs to “characterize” it in order to prove to the scientific
community that it really exists. Two of the most important
and trusted means of characterization for solid samples are
single crystal X-ray crystallography and combustion elemental
analysis. The former technique determines the composition of
one crystal (like a sugar or salt crystal) and provides the chemist
with the identity and arrangement of atoms in the sample. The
latter technique involves burning a portion (about 2 mg) of
the bulk solid sample and measuring the amount of carbon
dioxide, water, and nitrogen to provide the chemist with the
absolute percentages of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen in
the sample. Our crystallographer, BILL BRENNESSEL, has
been busy with the management and operation of facilities
dedicated to those two techniques. The X-ray Crystallography
Facility continues its high turnout of results with, on average, a
new sample run daily. In addition, undergraduate students get
hands-on training as part of the inorganic techniques course,
CHM 234, and graduate students learn the theory and full
operation of the instrumentation in CHM 417. Students who
have taken CHM 417 are officially trained users of the facility
and can examine their own research samples. The new CENTC
Elemental Analysis Facility, provided by a grant obtained
through Professor William Jones and CENTC (Center for
Enabling New Technologies through Catalysis), has been
running for nearly six months now. The instrumentation
includes the combustion analyzer, a microbalance, and a
high-end glovebox used to prepare samples that react with
the oxygen or water in air. Despite the synthetic research
community’s routine use of this technique, it is surprising that
we are one of the few universities to have a facility on site. The
in-house nature of the facility not only eliminates shipping