- Biography of Alexander E. Hess, D.Phil. Since I moved to San Jose to work at “Big Blue” up Santa Teresa hill at IBM Almaden Research Center in December 2016, I have become known at the lab as the “friendly neighbourhood synthetic chemist”. I primarily work in novel nanopatterning materials R&D for emerging lithography/semiconductor technologies such as Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) lithography with the mission to keep Moore’s law going for a while longer into the nanoscale era. I was born in Claremont, CA in the eastern LA area but spent most of my life in tiny , : home of Waterford Crystal and famous for Irish delicacies such as the blaa (a fantastic type of ) and (fried pig’s trotters)! While in Ireland, I completed my undergraduate degree in Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin in 2012, after which I was fortunate enough to secure a European Research Council Graduate Research Fellowship to attend Oxford University, UK to study anion supramolecular chemistry, specifically the anion templated synthesis of anion sensing bio-mimetic rotaxanes in the group of Prof. Paul D. Beer of Wadham College, Oxford. While at Oxford, I was a recipient of the Barbinder Watson Fund scholarship to present my work on halogen bonding [2]rotaxanes (which made the RSC’s 2016 OBC journal “Hot Papers” list) at the 10th International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry (ISMSC 2015) in Strasbourg, France. Shortly after, I received my D.Phil. in Chemistry in September 2016.

- Brief Statement During my studies in Ireland and the UK and also my post-doctoral professional career at IBM, I have been involved in outreach at department open days, chemistry camps, tutoring and organizing cohesive social and peer mentoring events catering for a wide variety of student backgrounds. I hope by joining the leadership of the ACS Silicon Valley section I will not only benefit by getting to know my fellow chemists in the area and develop my career further but also leverage my past experiences to contribute more to the mission of education, outreach and mentorship within in the chemistry community and the wider non-chemist bay area community as a whole. I believe my engaging personality, enthusiasm, adaptability as a result of being raised in multiple cultures and personal approachability will assist in these goals.