The Alumni Magazine of the Virginia Tech Department Of
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SPRING 2019 ELETHE MALUMNI MAGAZINEENTS OF THE VIRGINIA TECH DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY LETTER FROM THE CHAIR Dear Alumni and Friends of the Department, not be possible without your generous support of our endowed scholarships, Chemistry Annual Fund and participation in Giving As the 2018–2019 academic year draws to a close, I am continually Day. Thank you! impressed by the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, students and alumni. This academic year was nothing short of spectacular. Spring is also a time to say good-bye. Graduation saw the departure of one of our strongest undergraduate classes during my 20 years at In the spring, Chemistry gained a second University Distinguished VT. We were fortunate to have Dr. Colleen Kraft (B.S. ’81), the 2018 Professor as Daniel Crawford received this prestigious honor, joining President of the American Academy of Pediatrics as our graduation David Kingston in this elite group of faculty. Our faculty and staff speaker. Dr. Kraft is also the daughter of a former faculty member continue to make extra efforts to provide students with an outstanding and university distinguished professor Jim McGrath. Jim served as the learning experience. At the 2019 Access and Inclusion Awards Ph.D. advisor for four other alumni who won major research awards Ceremony, Candace Wall (2019 Sally Bohland Award), Joe Merola this year: Joe DeSimone, Abhishek Roy, Michael Hickner and current (Teaching/Research Faculty Award) and Kezia Johnson (Staff Award) faculty member Tim Long. were recognized by Services for Students with Disabilities for their extra efforts to enhance excellence in access and inclusion at VT. Spring 2019 also saw the retirement of two very dear friends and colleagues, Harry Gibson and Judy Riffle. One of the things that Anyone participating in research in VT Chemistry recognizes the separates VT Chemistry from other departments around the country importance of shared research facilities. This spring, Associate Chair is our collaborative culture and I am very proud to have published Amanda Morris was named a Faculty Fellow by the Office of Vice multiple papers with both Harry and Judy. Harry and Hervé Marand, President for Research to develop a strategic plan for core research who retired in Fall 2018, represented the first appointment (dinner) facilities. The shared research facilities will centralize instrumentation on my interview schedule. The mutual interests I shared with from across the university under one roof and work to promote Harry, especially golf, were the start of an instantaneous friendship. interdisciplinary collaboration. Judy’s generosity with resources and time, integrating me into the Macromolecular Science and Engineering Degree Program, our Graduate students are essential members of our teaching and research experiences for undergraduates (REU) programs, and other research missions. This year the Graduate School recognized two polymer activities on campus were essential to my success at VT. While chemistry graduate students with major awards. Kristen Noble, they will be missed, chemistry was successful hiring two new faculty, mentored by Bob Moore, was recognized with the 2019 Graduate Valerie Welborn, a theorist and current post-doc at the University of Teaching Assistant Excellence award, and Assad Khan, mentored by California, Berkeley who will be joining us in Fall 2019 and Emily Greg Liu, was recognized as the 2019 Graduate Student of the Year. Mevers, a natural products chemist and current post-doc at Harvard Assad was previously recognized by the department with the inaugural who will be joining us in Fall 2020. William H. Starnes, Jr. and Sofia M. Starnes Endowed Chemistry Fellowship. Bill Starnes also had a pretty good year, as he received With the largest incoming class on record set to come to VT in the 2019 Chemical Pioneer Award from the American Institute of the fall, the 2019–2020 academic year is shaping up to be an exciting Chemistry, recognizing his work on poly(vinyl chloride). one. Rest assured that Chemistry is working closely with the College of Science and the Provost to ensure these students have an excellent In May we had our annual Spring Undergraduate Poster Session education and the full VT experience. Stay tuned to see how this which coincides with the Spring DCAC Meeting. We are particularly experiment goes, have a great rest of 2019, and as always, thank you grateful to Tom Piccariello, Ann Norris, Karen McLean, Fred for your support of the department. Davidson, Beth Calvey, Frank Akers, Rob Shenton, Bob Schwerzel, Jen Lalli, Joe Thrasher and Bill Starnes for their participation in the Sincerely, meeting and poster judging. After the poster session, we held our annual award ceremony which highlights our excellent graduate and undergraduate students. These awards (found on page 11) would 2 ELEMENTS SPRING 2019 CONTENTS EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief: Alan Esker Writer: Corrin Lundquist FEATURED NEWS Design: Corrin Lundquist 4 DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY ALUMNI NEWS Department Chair: Alan Esker 6 Associate Chair: Amanda Morris Director of Undergraduate Programs: Patricia Amateis Director of Graduate Program: John Morris 8 FACULTY NEWS TELL US WHAT YOU THINK We welcome your comments and story ideas for future issues: [email protected] 10 STUDENT NEWS KEEP UP WITH US Follow us on Facebook (VTCHEM) and Twitter (@VTChemDept) Virginia Tech is an equal opportunity/ affirmative action institution. ON THE COVER Simran Kala, an undergraduate researcher studying with Michael Schulz, presents her poster to judges (made up of DCAC members) at the Spring 2019 Undergraduate Research Symposium. 3 FEATURED NEWS / DISTINGUISHED In 19 years, Daniel Crawford has achieved an exceptional career as a brilliant theoretical chemist and now has another achievement to add to his list: University Distinguished Professor. BY ALAN ESKER EDITED BY CORRIN LUNDQUIST The rank of University Distinguished Professor is the university's preeminent faculty rank, and of the 1,500 active faculty members at Virginia Tech, only about 20 current faculty have been bestowed the honor by the Board of Visitors. In 2016, he worked to secure $19.4 million in National Science Crawford earned his undergraduate degree in 1992 from Duke Foundation funding to create the Molecular Software Sciences University and went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University Institute, better known as MolSSI, with the goal to “serve as a nexus of Georgia in 1996. He joined the Virginia Tech faculty as an for science, education and cooperation serving the community of assistant professor in 2000 and has since made his indelible mark computational molecular scientists,” a goal which has since been on the chemistry community. achieved. MolSSI has thrived under Crawford's directorship. Its impact is wide-reaching throughout the computational chemistry At the time of his arrival, he was already highly anticipated to community as it works to educate a new crop of software scientists be a future leader in the area of coupled-cluster calculations, but through its multilevel fellowship program, open source resources he was starting out as the department's sole theoretical chemist. and Education Workshops ranging from one day introduction In his first year, he won a New Faculty Award from the Camille courses to the biennial two week Software Summer School. and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and a Research Innovation Award from Research Corporation, followed by an NSF CAREER Award Even with all his achievements over the course of his remarkable and the Cottrell Scholar Award, both within the next few years. career, Crawford has never lost sight of the importance of teaching. His research at the time targeted the implementation of completely He has won the departmental teaching award twice and has also new codes within the coupled cluster framework for determining received the university-wide Certificate of Teaching Excellence. chiroptical properties of molecules, allowing for precise control Moreover, he is consistently one of the most well-received lecturers over stereochemistry for drugs, without which could lead to by students due to his clarity and compassion which earns the disastrous side effects. More importantly, however, he radically respect of every student that he teaches. He has remained as down- altered the culture of the department: our theory group has since to-earth as he was as an assistant professor; case in point: Crawford grown to five, with the additions of Diego Troya, Ed Valeev, Nick has signed on to teach General Chemistry for Majors in the fall. Mayhall and, most recently, Valerie Welborn. What sticks out most about Crawford is that he would never be As Crawford's career progressed, he continued to inspire and lead one to tell you about his achievements, which is why we have his discipline. He won the Paul A. M. Dirac Medal of the World taken the time to highlight them here. The Board of Visitors could Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists in 2010 not have bestowed this title on a more honorable candidate. and became a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2015. 4 ELEMENTS / FEATURED NEWS GRADUATE STUDENT OF THE YEAR At the Graduate School’s annual awards banquet, Assad Khan was recognized as the 2019 Graduate Student of the Year. Assad is a fifth-year graduate student in Prof. Guoliang (Greg) Liu’s group, studying plasmonic nanoparticles and polymer nanocomposites with potential applications in energy-efficient optical coatings for windows, electronics and acoustics. Originally from Pakistan, he was led to Blacksburg by his deep curiosity about the use of polymeric materials for energy related applications. Currently in the final stages of his graduate career, Assad has made the most of his time at Virginia Tech, racking up nine peer-reviewed publications, nine oral presentations at national conferences and countless poster presentations, but his accomplishments don’t stop there. Within the lab, Assad mentored eight undergraduate and graduate students and together, their work yielded three co-authored publications.