Badger Chemist
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Est. 1953. NO. 55 2011 Badger Chemist THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON media, education resources, & information technology CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN –MadisoN CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT CONTENTS From the Chair ................................................ 1 New Badger Chemists ......................................... 2 Our Awards .................................................. 4 Notable News ................................................ 8 Partners in Giving Campaign ................................... 9 This ‘n’ That. ................................................. 10 New Assistant Professor Randy Goldsmith ........................ 11 Chemistry News. 12 Chemical Education Digital Library Activities. .................... 15 WISL Activities .. 17 Vedejs Reunion .............................................. 19 Zimmerman Group ........................................... 20 Zimmerman Reunion ......................................... 22 Featured Alumnus ............................................ 23 ICE (Institute for Chemical Education) ........................... 24 In Memoriam ................................................ 29 Chemistry Department Support. ................................ 37 Donors to Department Funds . ................................. 38 2011 BADGER CHEMIST Matthew Sanders Sue Martin-Zernicke Editor Editorial Assistant Designed by MERIT [Media, Education Resouces & Information Technology] School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison Est. 1953 NO. 56 Linda Endlich Art Direction 2011 Natalie Conant Production Assistance From the Chair Fall 2011 Dear Badger Chemists: The Badger Chemist and the Department website (www.chem.wisc.edu) are the best ways for you to stay in touch with UW–Madison Chemistry. Again this year, Matt Sanders has served as BC’s editor-in-chief, collecting news from around the Department and the world for your enjoyment and edification. The Department continues to be recognized for excellence in research, teaching, and service to the community. Over the past year, our faculty won three national ACS awards: the Irving Langmuir Award to Jim Skinner, the Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry to Bob Hamers, and the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry to Hans Reich. Bassam Shakhashiri was elected President of the ACS. I am very proud that our departmental co-workers won four Staff Excellence Awards from the College of Letters and Science: NMR director Dr. Charlie Fry, Organic Division Coordinator Ms. Kat Myhre, Machinist Ed Vasiukevicius, and Departmental Administrator Rosana Pérez-Ellmann. Near-Dr. Brian Esselman, a senior graduate student in the McMahon group, just won the UW–Madison Teaching Assistant Award for Innovation. It has been highly rewarding working with these and the many other talented colleagues around the Department. Two longstanding and outstanding colleagues have retired: Ed Vedejs (who spent the past 12 years at U. Michigan after 32 years in Madison) and Howard Zimmerman (with 51 years of service). Both celebrations were a wonderful chance for alums to return to Madison and tell stories about their adventures here in decades past. We’ve hired two new faculty. Assistant Professor Randy Goldsmith is a physical-inorganic-materials chemist who will apply single-molecule methods to a variety of interdisciplinary problems. Full Professor Kyoung-Shin Choi will join us from Purdue in Summer of 2012. She uses electrodeposition to create fascinating new mixed-metal electrode surfaces that have a bright future in solar energy conversion. Both are outstanding individuals who will carry our traditions forward for many years to come. The inaugural meeting of our Board of Advisors occurred in October. This is a group of national leaders from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries who will lend us their advice and expertise as we work to better connect faculty and students with our partners in industry. Finally, the plan for a new Chemistry Instructional Facility at the corner of Mills Street and University Avenue was ranked the top building priority by the Campus Planning Committee. Bob McMahon and Fleming Crim led the design effort. We’re very excited about the possibility of adding new lecture halls and modern undergraduate laboratories to the complex. We’ll update you on further progress as the plan goes to the UW System for evaluation. In spite of budgetary challenges, the Department remains a vibrant place in which to teach and do frontier science. Please continue to send us news of what you are doing out there in the world. I hope to meet many of you at our UW–Madison Chem- istry Open House event at the ACS national meeting in San Diego in March. Best wishes for a great 2012! With very best regards, James C. Weischaar Chair, Department of Chemistry James C. Weischaar [email protected] BADGER CHEMIST New Badger Chemists PHD Diane Loretta Nutbrown Margrith Eileen Mattmann (Blackwell) AUGUST 2010 (Burstyn/Moore) Design, synthesis, and evaluation of Sensing ethylene with Ag(I)-bound small molecules for the modulation Tamas Benkovics (Yoon) fluoroionophores and development of quorum sensing in Pseudomonas Oxaziridine-mediated and assessment of “Fun with aeruginosa. functionalizations of hydrocarbons Chemistry” camps Richard Edwin Ian McDonald (Stahl) Maren Emily Buck (Lynn) Keewook Paeng (Ediger) 1. Development of palladium-catalyzed Covalent layer-by-layer assembly of Molecular mobility in thin polymer aerobic oxidative amination of alkenes reactive thin films fabricated from films probed by reorientation of 2. Enantioselective hydroformylation poly(2-alkenyl azlactone)s fluorescent molecules of N-vinyl carboxamides, allyl carbamates, and allyl ethers using Susan Marie Brastad Burden Kristin Nicole Plessel (Reich) chiral diazaphospholane ligands (Nathanson) A. Addition of Organolithium Reagents Investigation of proton exchange reactions to Carbonyl Compounds Elizabeth Margaret Moscato- between acidic gases and protic solvents B. Chelation Strength in Organolithi- Goodpaster (Landis) containing dissolved ions um Reagents Information-rich investigations into catalytic olefin polymerization: Nicola Jean Burrmann Ye Sun (Ediger) technique development and (McMahon/Moore) Stability and stabilization of mechanistic studies Synthesis of precursors to and amorphous organic solids : crystal spectroscopic characterization of highly growth mechanisms and drug Peerasak Paoprasert (Gopalan) unsaturated carbenes and diradicals solubility in polymers Tailoring organic/inorganic interfaces and development and implementation Jeannine Robin Szczech (Jin) by surface grafting molecules of a web-based stereochemistry tutorial Nanomaterials of silicides and silicon Christopher Joseph Shaffer (McMahon) Jessica Dawn Gardner (Brunold) for energy conversion and storage Synthesis and photochemistry of Spectroscopic and computational Xiaoyu Wang (Hamers) reactive organic molecules of relevance studies of heme and nonheme Mechanistic studies of photochemical to astrochemistry iron-dependent enzymes: nature of reactions on the surfaces of group IV Joseph Robert Stringer (Blackwell) substrate/active site interactions and semiconductors Design and construction of small- mechanistic implications Katherine Windsor (McMahon) molecule macroarrays for the discovery of antibacterial compounds Li Guo (Gellman) Cycloaromatization studies of C10H4 Enantioselective organocatalytic Michael ene-tetraynes and their derivatives : development and implementation of new design strategies for the generation reactions: synthesis and application of Junshu Zhao (Ediger) of discretely folded peptoids new gamma-amino acids in the design of Dynamics of polymers in miscible gamma-peptide foldamers blends and mixtures Avery Lamar Watkins (Landis) Andrew John Huisman (Keutsch) Synthetic and Mechanistic Measurements and modeling of glyoxal: DECEMBER 2010 Studies of Rhodium-Catalyzed insights into rural photochemistry and Asymmetric Hydroformylation with Diazaphospholane Ligands secondary organic aerosol production Kristin Anne Briney (Crim) Smita Jha (Kuech) The influence of vibrational excitation Xuan Ye (Stahl) Synthesis of narrow band-gap III-V on the photoisomerization of trans- Mechanistic studies of palladium- semiconductors using metal-organic stilbene in solution catalyzed “Wacker-type” intramolecular vapor phase epitaxy aerobic oxidative amination of Daniel Keith Burden (Nathanson) alkenes and development of safe and Suzanne Elizabeth Kulevich (Smith) The role of chain structure and scalable continuous-flow methods for Hydrophobic modification of peptides functional group on HCl entry into palladium-catalyzed aerobic oxidation to enhance electrospray ionization mass surfactant-coated sulfuric acid spectrometry analysis Jihua Zhang (Stahl/Gellman) Karen Sue Conrad (Brunold) The development and study of Yun Ling (Zanni) Spectroscopic and computational functionalized nylon-3 polymers Efforts toward elucidating hIAPP insights into the transport and toward biomaterials aggregation pathway by 2D IR utilization of B12 in biological systems spectroscopy Colin Jeremy Ingram (Weisshaar) Jessica Lynn Menke (McMahon) Probing the cytoplasm of Escherichia MAY 2011 Computational and matrix- coli with time-resolved flourescence Christopher John Annessley (Crim) isolation spectroscopy studies of anisotropy cyanocyclobutadienes Increasing the complexity of Lingyin Li (Kiessling) vibrationally mediated reactions: Synthetic surfaces to control cell fate