Bailey Wins Visiting Professor Fellowship
Dr. Joe Bailey has won a Visiting Professor Fellowship at the Center for Ecological Research at Kyoto University, Japan (June-Aug. 2014). http://www.ecology.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/visitor.html
Archives for January 2014
Professor Bursten Elected AAAS Chemistry Chair
Dr. Bruce Bursten, distinguished professor of chemistry, was elected as the 2014 Chair-Elect, 2015 Chair and 2016 Retiring Chair of the Section on Chemistry of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
AAAS is the world’s largest and most prestigious general scientific society, with 126,995 individual and institutional members at the end of 2008. It is also the publisher of the well-known scientific journal Science, which was founded in 1880 on seed money from the American inventor Thomas Edison. It now has grown into the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general-science journal with a weekly circulation of 138,549.
Bursten will participate in all AAAS Chemistry Section meetings and oversee the section affairs to actively involve affiliated organizations and enhance communication among chemistry scientists in all areas. His new role with the AAAS will be in addition to his teaching and research activities at UT. Bursten conducts research in inorganic chemistry. His research centers on the correlation of theoretical and experimental electronic structural data with the bonding and reactivity patterns of metal-containing molecules. He is the author or coauthor of more than 160 research papers, and he has presented more than 200 research seminars at other universities, national laboratories, and companies. He is also a coauthor of one of the leading textbooks in general chemistry, currently in its 13th edition.
Prior to this honor, Bursten has received numerous national and international honors for his academic accomplishments. Among these, in 1984 he received a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award and in 1985 he was named a Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 2001, he received the Catalyst Award from the American Chemistry Council, which is a national award for teachers of chemistry. He received the 2003 Spiers Medal and Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom, he was elected a Fellow of the AAAS in 2004, and received the Morley Medal of the Cleveland Section of the ACS in 2005. He was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2010.
Bursten received his S.B. in Chemistry with Honors from the University of Chicago in 1974, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1978 under the direction of the late Professor Richard F. Fenske. He was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Texas A&M University from 1978-1980, conducting research with the late Professor F. Albert Cotton. He joined the faculty of The Ohio State University in 1980 as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. In 1997 he was named Distinguished University Professor. In October 1999 he became Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Ohio State, a position he held until October 2003. In 2005 he moved to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. In 2006 he was elected to the Presidential succession of the ACS. He was President-Elect for 2007, President of the ACS for 2008, and Immediate Past President for 2009. During those three years, he also served as a member of the ACS Board of Directors.
Hollingsworth et al. Article
A new paper by Hollingsworth et al. has come out in BMC Evolutionary Biology that provides the most complete phylogeny to date of North American minnows.
Hollingsworth, P.R. Jr., A.M. Simons, J.A. Fordyce, and C.D. Hulsey. 2013. Explosive diversification following a benthic to pelagic shift in freshwater fishes. BMC Evolutionary Biology. 13:272.
The article is open access:
Chris Murdock Published Paper in JACS
Chris Murdock, a fifth year Ph.D. student in Professor Jenkins’ group, published a paper titled Rotating Phenyl Rings as a Guest-Dependent Switch in Two-Dimensional Metal–Organic Frameworks in the Jounral of American Chemical Society (JACS*).
The researchers studied a 2D metal-organic framework (MOF) in which a portion of the bridging linker can swivel to block the pore as a function of guest. Importantly, the ligand can rotate in a controlled manner and it was shown for the first time that the opening and closing of the channels or pores can be monitored by 13C CP MAS NMR. “This direct spectroscopic tecnhique could be highly valuable for testing additional frameworks which breathe through a similar ‘gate’ mechanism and would reduce the need for single crystal diffraction.” said Murdock, “Additionally, classic molecular dynamic simulations provided insight into why rotation occurs, and is due to differences in energies between the host framework and the adsorbed guest.”
This paper is a collaborative effort between Murdock, Jenkins and Dr. David Keffer, a professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, and his student Nicholas McNutt. “Dr. Keffer and Nicholas McNutt performed classical molecular dynamics simulations on the materials I had synthesized.” Murdock explained, “The objective of the manuscript was the study of materials which can act as gates by simply rotating a portion of the material to open and close the accessible pores or holes. Dr. Keffer and Nick’s simulations were therefore important as they allowed us to understand why this rotation was occurring.”
Originally from Sturgis, Kentucky, Murdock attended Kentucky Wesleyan College and obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry in 2009. Two weeks after graduation, Murdock moved to Knoxville to start his graduate studies at the University of Tennessee and joined Jenkins’ group in 2010. His main research area is studying a new method for using MOFs as reagents. Murdock has first-authored and co-authored six papers since he joined the group. Besides his academic achievements, Murdock is actively playing sports including soccer and frisbee. Recently, he started running and participated in several 5Ks and even the Knoxville half-marathon last year. Scheduled to graduate this spring, Murdock is currently looking for industry jobs and staff scientist positions for maintaining X-ray facilities.
*Founded in 1879, JACS is the flagship journal of the American Chemical Society and the preeminent journal in the field. This periodical is devoted to the publication of fundamental research papers in all areas of chemistry. Published weekly, JACS provides research essential to the field of chemistry and is the most cited journal in chemistry field as reported in the 2010 Journal Citation Report© Thomson Reuters.