Thank you for visiting this website, which contains information on my professional and research activities. If you are a member (or a friend) of the American Chemical Society (ACS), I appreciate your support and forbearance during my service as a member of the ACS Presidential Succession in 2020-2022.
I have been an ACS member for 44 years and have been active in local, division, national and international arenas. Over the years I have enjoyed working with colleagues, friends, teachers, and students in the global chemistry enterprise. I am proud of being a chemist, and proud to be an ACS member.
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, I worked closely with ACS colleagues and staff to strengthen our profession and support our members throughout my Presidential Succession period (2020–2022). My Presidential platform, “Growth, Collaboration, and Advocacy” (C&EN Comment, 12/7/2020), reflected my belief that, in an increasingly competitive world, thoughtful and sustained growth is both essential and achievable. There are many ways we can help advance the chemistry enterprise, including: 1) Fostering innovation and disciplinary development, 2) Encouraging industrial engagement and entrepreneurship, 3) Building meaningful international collaborations, and 4) Advocating for strong public and governmental support of scientific research. A brief summary of my efforts in these areas is provided below
Innovation and Disciplinary Growth. From history, we know that innovation is the engine of growth for most organizations. A major component of innovation is to seek emerging areas for research and to use them for new applications and opportunities. Working with the ACS Committee on Science (ComSci), we organized three ACS webinars (Frontier Fridays) in May and June 2021, featuring new innovative research. Three outstanding lectures were given by Professors Zhenan Bao (Stanford) on “Skin-Inspired Organic Electronics), Amy Prieto (Colorado State) on “Lithium Ion Batteries: The Road to Sustainable Energy Storage”, and Sir Fraser Stoddart (Northwestern, 2016 Nobel Laureate) on “Artificial Molecular Machines.” All three webinars were highly successful with huge turnouts. ComSci has continued the Frontier Fridays program in 2022 with two more webinars, and I was pleased to help moderate one of them (“Chemistry Tools to Help Achieve Zero World Hunger”, by Michael Appell and Wunmi Sadik, with introduction by Michael Morello).
The Committee of Science and I also organized a presidential symposium at ACS Fall 2021 meeting on “New Frontiers and Opportunities for Chemistry.” Thirty-five distinguished speakers were invited to share their cutting-edge research in advanced materials, nanotechnology, reticular chemistry, catalysis, biomedical, electronics, environment, artificial intelligence, and sustainability. Moreover, I also gave quite a few talks on innovation and wrote a C&EN Comment on the same topic on 6/5/2021 and an article on Fostering Innovation in the ACS Industry Matters newsletter on 12/9/2021.
One important innovation area is Sustainability. I am actively doing research myself in this area and have published many papers and given numerous talks on sustainability. At the ACS national meeting in August 2020, I organized a SCHB symposium on “Sustainable Green Chemistry: Bench to Market”, with the goal of promoting sustainability and showcasing successful product development in the chemical and polymer business sectors. At the ACS national meeting in April 2021, I co-organized a Presidential/AGFD symposium on “Sustainability: Advances and Applications,” with an emphasis on food, agriculture, and biobased materials. In 2022, I co-organized an ENVR symposium on “Innovative Materials and Techniques for Environmental Sustainability” at ACS national meeting in March 2022, a POLY symposium on “Green Polymer Chemistry and Sustainability” at ACS national meeting in August 2022, and a “Sustainable Green Chemistry” symposium at the SERMACS meeting in Puerto Rico in October 2022. In addition, I co-edited a two-volume book on “Green Polymer Chemistry and Sustainability” with Rich Gross, which was published by ACS Books in December 2020. I also wrote two C&EN Comment articles on Sustainability (2/10/2020; 3/15/2021) and an article in the ACS Industry Matters newsletter on 11/4/2021.
Another important growth area includes the virtual and the digitized technologies. We all saw the importance and the popularity of Zoom meetings and virtual communications since the pandemic in 2020. I certainly benefitted from virtual meetings in my many engagements in my ACS actvities. There is also the growing trend of digitization in chemistry, including the use of artificial intelligence and data science. I wrote a C&EN Comment on these trends on 11/8/21. I also co-organized an AGFD symposium on this topic as applied to agriculture and food areas in the ACS March 2022 national meeting.
Industrial Engagement and Entrepreneurship. In order to innovate and bring discoveries to the marketplace, we need industrial involvement and entrepreneurship (ACS Industry Matters Newsletter, 6/30/2022). In an effort to promote entrepreneurship, I collaborated with SCHB, BMGT and ACS staff to organize two successful ACS webinars in 2020 (Business Plan and Funding). In 2021, working with the same collaborators, we organized three more ACS webinars on “Sole Proprietorship to Incorporation”, “Intellectual Property”, and “Organizing the Company.” In 2022 we continued this webinar series with more webinars on “The Role of Technology Transfer”, “How to set up Equity and Security Structures”, and “How to set up Essential Business Contracts.” In another collaborative effort, we organized a presidential symposium in Fall 2021 on “Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Collaborations”, where we assembled 45 speakers from industry, academia, and government, covering talks on corporate highlights, business success factors, funding, government agencies, and other topics. Through these means, we hoped to enhance the collaborations among academia, industry, and government labs, and increase the probability of success for entrepreneurs and corporate managers. We also hoped to stimulate increased industrial interest in ACS and further involvement of industrial and business members.
During the August 2021 ACS Council meeting, I solicited input from ACS Councilors on industrial engagement and support of start-ups from academic inventors. In a C&EN Comment on 8/30/2021, I wrote about entrepreneurship, industrial engagement and membership and got good feedbacks from several ACS members. The various input and suggestions were compiled and prioritized by a Presidential-Staff working group. The information gathered was transferred in April 2022 to the Industry Member Task Force, which was initiated by the Professional and Member Relations Committee (P&MR) of the ACS Board of Directors, with Christina Bodurow as chair. (I also served as a Task Force member.) At the recommendation of this Task Force, a P&MR Industry Advisory Board was initiated in December 2022 for follow-up and further actions.
Another related initiative was to foster connections among ACS members and colleagues who might be interested in innovation, entrepreneurship, business management, academic-industrial-governmeent collaboration, consulting, networking, and associated activities. Through the efforts of Tiffany Hoerter and other ACS staff colleagues, a program called “In-Person Connect” was piloted in the ACS Spring 2022 Meeting in San Diego to facilitate such in-person connections (C&EN Comment, 2/7/2022). For the ACS Fall 2022 Meeting in Chicago, a similar program, called “ACS Link On-Site”, was offered to all meeting registrants. The ACS staff has now continued this ACS Link program on-line, so that ACS members can connect any time virtually (www.acs.org/ACSLink).
International Collaborations. Because of the travel restrictions related to Covid-19, my participation at international meetings and events was virtual for most of my Presidential Succession years. Thus, I participated in several international meetings and activities virtually and spoke in quite a few of them. I also participated in periodic dialogues with ACS International Chapter colleagues, arranged by ACS staff and the International Activities Committee. As the pandemic subsided later in 2022, I travelled quite a lot, including talks at the Summit of ACS International Chapters and Student Chapters in Latin America and the Conference of Latin American Chemical Societies (CLAQ), both in Brazil.
Advocacy. In 2021, I worked with ACS staff and YCC to hold a training course on advocacy for YCC and student leaders at the Leadership Institute. I participated in a beta testing of an advocacy workshop on climate change in September 2022 and participated in a virtual visit with Congressional staffers in May 2022. I was also a frequent advocate for innovation and sustainability, giving many talks to different audiences and writing articles to emphasize their importance to the future of chemistry.
Communication and Community. One of the pleasures of being ACS President was the frequent opportunities to talk to ACS members, staff, colleagues, and students. In this way, I could get input directly from our stakeholders, discuss current issues, and possible solutions. These were also good opportunities to advocate for chemistry, build communities of like-minded people, and publicize my platform and programs.
Given in the table below are my engagements and activities as a member of the Presidential Succession in 2020 – 2022. As you can see, I was involved with many meetings and talks (31 in 2020, 55 in 2021, and 34 in 2022). I was also active in writing articles, and organizing symposia and webinars. Those three years were very busy, and I appreciate the opportunities to serve ACS members and contribute towards the chemistry enterprise. I would like to thank all my friends, ACS members, and ACS staff for their input, collaboration, and help. It was a true pleasure working with all of you!
| Task type | Pres-Elect, 2020 | President, 2021 | Imm. Past Pres, 2022 |
| Talks at ACS meetings, sections, divisions, committees | 11 | 18 | 19 |
| International engagements | 6 | 15 | 3 |
| Other talks and engagements | 5 | 13 | 6 |
| Other misc. U.S. meetings | 9 | 9 | 6 |
| Articles in ACS Industry Matters | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Articles in C&EN (Comments) | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| ACS National + Regional Meetings | 1 + 1 | 2 + 4 | 2 + 2 |
| ACS webinars organized/involved | 2 | 6 | 4 |
| ACS symposia organized* | 2 | 4 | 3 |
